Salt Dough Ornament Favors

Just like last year, Sak and I were on party favor duty for our church's annual women's luncheon.

It took me a long time to figure out a good idea this time, which became a problem last week when we were trying to crunch them all out a few days prior! But the inspiration I ultimately found was this:

(source)

I didn't have a cool fancy cookie cutter, so I used a plain star.  With the help of Sak and my aunt (who came to visit me, yay!), we made over 100 salt dough stars.

Though I'm sure most of you are familiar with salt dough, it's a simple and effective mixture of salt and flour and water which, when baked, hardens.  I used this recipe, only with maybe a 1/4 cup or more water added since my dough was really dry.

Baked stars.  This particular batch we forgot to poke holes in for string, so Sak had to drill through them.  I was surprised that it worked, but it did!

Next I took all the leftover scrapbook pens from the wedding and any fine-point Sharpies I could find, and abused the heck out of the nibs by drawing on the cookie surfaces.

Many, many cookies...

I tried to add the theme verse to the middle of the star, but it was just really long.

So instead we went with a shortened version, and if people want to know what the whole verse is they can look it up. :P

They are also shiny because Sak added a coat of polyurethane to each one.  That stuff smells really bad, so make sure you do it in a well-ventilated area if you use it.

The verse is on the back, and some are painted white because of..certain burn marks due to overbaking. Shhh.  It's our little secret, okay?

Anyway, we added a string to the ornament...

And wrapped each one up in a square of wax paper.

I tucked the little booklet of Christmas event reminders into the back of the package...

And wrapped the whole thing up with a bit of green ribbon.

Honestly I think last year's favors were a whole lot more impressive for less work, but these..these have that uh, home-made charm!  That's important! Hehe.  The ladies at church seemed to like them, though more than one thought it was a cookie to eat.  Not edible! Definitely not edible!

Have you ever used salt dough?  Before this, the last time I made them was as a kid!  So much cheaper to made salt dough than to buy Play-Doh.