DIY Crafts: Salt Dough

One of my favorite obsessions, and to be honest I have so many it gets hard to keep track, but one of my favorites is Pinterest!  I've had an account with them for a little while now, but so far I had only "Liked" or "Re-pinned" about a million things and had not even attempted any of the numerous DIY crafts that I had spent so many hours looking at! (I would like to add, that I have tried plenty of recipes so far, but no crafts! Just clarifying)

I knew something needed to been done about that immediately and I also knew that I wanted to blog about it.. in came my first Pinterest inspired craft:  Salt Dough Ornaments

It had everything I liked to blog about: baking, food ingredients, cute stuff.. but it was also a fun, easy to do craft!

If you are bored and you like to bake, this is a neat thing to do that doesn't require a lot of skill (thank goodness!)  You just need three ingredients to get started!

Salt Dough Recipe

Ingredients:

2 Cups Flour

1 cup Salt

1 cup water

For the Supplies:

Rolling Pin

Stamps and Ink

Cookie Cutters

Spatula

Sand Paper

Directions:

In a bowl, add the flour...

the salt and the water.

Knead the mixture together until the dough forms.  It will feels grainy and very different from what you are use to!  It is because of the WHOLE cup of salt!

Roll out your dough to about 1/4 in. thickness.

Cut out your design: I choose a cupcake cookie cutter my husband got me for Christmas...

I also cut out a heart.. just because!

Since this was all just experimental anyway, I decided to try stamping a couple of the "ornaments".

The next step was where I had trouble, after I made, rolled and cut out the dough, I read the rest of the directions.  You are suppose to bake the ornaments at 200 degrees for 6 hours.

 

Well, I decided to try and cut that time down, so I baked them for 1 hour at 200 and then cranked the oven up to 400 degrees for another 2 hours or so.

While the ornaments turned out okay, some of them were a little puffed up in the middle, and I think that was because I cooked them too high.

After you take them out of the oven, let them cool.  Take a piece of sandpaper or a sturdy file and file down the rough edges.

 

So, if you plan on wasting away the afternoon doing something crafty, this project doesn't let you down; just make sure you have enough time to do it right!

I still have to paint the little guys (everyone keeps asking me if they are little houses, so I definitely need to paint them to make them look like cupcakes!), but I still have to go into town to get some pretty paint... 

If I get a chance to do it soon, I'll post the pictures, but I also think with a little clear varnish and a pretty ribbon hanger, they could be neat just the way they are...

Homemade Vanilla Extract: Days 1 & 2

Sites like http://www.thehappyhousewife.com/, http://www.diynatural.com/, and http://www.allrecipes.com/, all have recipes posted on how to make your own vanilla extract; when I saw how easy, and relatively cheap it was, I decided I had to try it!  

**Added bonus to this cool experiment, is that I will be able to stop buying the cheap imitation extract!!

 Day 1

I started out with just four items:

A bottle of vodka we had in our bar.

1 vanilla bean we bought at Whole Foods for $6.

2 bottle we found at Michael's for $1 each

Make sure you wash the bottles before you use them!

I cut the bean in half and put inside the bottles, then I filled up the bottle with vodka.

 

Make sure you leave enough room to put the cork back in, I made this mistake and had to end up pouring out some of the vodka.

 

Now you need to find a place to store your bottle (or bottles) because the process of the vodka becoming extract takes several months; about 2 to 3, but for a bottle this size, it might be less.  Sure this process requires patience, but soon you will have your very own homemade vanilla extract, and all for less than $10!

Oh and I read on a few of the websites, that you should be able to use each bean at least twice!

Day 2

By day 2, I could already see progress being made!

Update: at the end of Week 1

Make sure you shake  your bottles just a little bit about once a week; that way the vanilla can be distributed throughout!