Ideas for modeling dough. Crafts from salt dough: instructions and master classes for making crafts with your own hands

Modeling is a great way to develop fine motor skills in children. However, kids love to taste everything, so traditional modeling materials such as clay or plasticine are often not suitable for activities. There is an excellent alternative - salt dough: it is very easy to sculpt from it, it is much softer and more pliable than plasticine, and at the same time, it is absolutely safe for the child.

Any product can be made from this material. Young children (from one and a half years old) can, under your guidance, try to create simple figures from salt dough, and an older child can try to create any crafts, souvenirs or toys that their imagination and skill are capable of.

How to make salt dough?

To top off all the advantages of this modeling material, it is also very affordable, as you can quickly make it in your kitchen.

There are many recipes for making salt dough, so everyone has the opportunity to choose the most convenient and simple one for themselves.

Here's one way:

take a glass of salt (about 200 g), add 2 glasses of flour, and diluting with water (more than half a glass), knead the dough;
You will determine the degree of its readiness as you go: if the dough sticks to your hands and stretches too much, add a little more flour, and if it crumbles, it means there is not enough water;
try rolling a ball and making several indentations in it (the finished dough will hold its shape well without spreading);
when kneading, it is recommended to add a little (tablespoon) vegetable oil;
for sculpting relief figures, add 2 tablespoons of starch;
Wrap the well-kneaded mass in plastic and put it in the refrigerator for several hours;
toys made from salt dough can be painted ready-made, or you can prepare colored dough at once (make it in several separate containers and add food coloring, instant coffee, beet or carrot juice, acrylic or gouache paints, etc. when kneading.

You can watch special master classes if you are going to sculpt for the first time.

The goal of modeling classes for children should be to develop an interest in this art, to become familiar with all the properties and capabilities of the material: the dough can be torn, crushed, flattened, rolled, crumbled, and dried. Teach your child to come up with stories, make toys or figurines of current characters for them, and combine them into whole large compositions. This will help you not only develop and improve your children’s fine motor skills, but will also develop their imagination, imagination, and speech.

Making simple crafts with kids

You should sculpt on a special modeling board or baking sheet. Also prepare a small rolling pin for rolling out the dough, a brush (you will sometimes have to moisten the dough with water), stacks - sticks for working with plasticine or dough, other details, depending on the direction of your work (paints, molds, decorations, etc.).

If you are just starting to work with a small child, choose the simplest patterns and master classes so that it is easy and interesting for children to sculpt products.

First, you can do something yourself, demonstrating it to the child, then perform the actions with his hand, and then let him try to create a toy from salt dough with his own hands.

Together with your child, create a fairy tale about your character. For example, it is very easy to make a small cute caterpillar or even its whole family, and then play with them.

Show your child how to make a caterpillar: you need to pinch off small pieces of dough and roll them into balls of different sizes.
For the head of the product you will need a large ball, and for the body - several smaller parts. The final appearance of the craft depends on how many balls you get and what diameter they are.
Then you can connect all the balls together. To make the elements stick to each other better, moisten them with water at the joints.
The caterpillar's face can be drawn or sculpted, and the antennae can be made from cut matches.
Now the product needs to be dried. Some people prefer to do this in natural conditions. This method will take you about 3-4 days. Also, figurines made from salt dough can be dried in the oven: if it was preheated to 55-80°C, then you will need to keep the product there on a baking sheet with parchment paper for about an hour, and if you put the figurines in a cold oven, then set the temperature to 150 °C and, after drying it a little, leave the crafts in the oven while it cools.
When the toy is dry, color it with your child. This can be done with gouache, acrylic paints or watercolors.

In the same way, other toys are very easily created - octopuses, snakes, cats, fish, birds, vegetables and fruits. You can cut out blanks from cardboard, and then trace them on the dough.

A very simple master class on making salt dough figurines as Christmas tree decorations will also be available for little children.

Prepare several colorful pieces of dough.
Roll them out well and, using a variety of cookie cutters, cut out the shapes you need.
Using a tube or stick, make holes in the figures so that they can later be hung by a thread or ribbon on the Christmas tree.
If you make a lot of holes, you will get real openwork figures.
Products can also be decorated with beads (only plastic ones cannot be dried in the oven), various cereals, buttons, shells, pieces of bugles, etc. Sprinkle the finished toy with sparkles (on a layer of glue or varnish).
Figures painted with permanent markers or decorated with all kinds of stamps (for children's creativity, of any texture) also look very beautiful.

As a memorable home souvenir, you can make prints of the child's feet and hands, and on the back side sign how old the baby was.

Making more complex toys

There are master classes that show that you can create more complex toys, figurines, or even entire compositions with your own hands. For example, try with older children to make a cute hedgehog or the whole hedgehog family.

Since you will be working on a three-dimensional figure made of salt dough, you will need some kind of ball to create the body of the hedgehog. You can take wood, plastic or even foil, the main thing is that it is very dense.
Cover it well with dough so that there are no holes anywhere.
The eyes and nose of the hedgehog can be made from dough or you can use any available means (for example, large peppercorns).
Using nail scissors, form needles on the back of the hedgehog (do row by row in a checkerboard pattern).
You can also make fruits that your forest dweller will carry on his back.
Then you should dry the hedgehog and decorate it. Cover the piece with clear nail polish to prevent the paint from fading and the appearance of the figurine from deteriorating over time.

In the same way you can make a sheep, an owl, and any other three-dimensional toy.

Master classes will help you create even entire paintings from salt dough, which will become not only an excellent decoration for your home, but also a wonderful original souvenir as a gift. It is better to sculpt pictures on fabric, foil or painted cardboard. When the craft is completely dry, paint it and varnish it.

Modeling from salt dough is attractive for a preschooler, the material is pleasant to hold in hands, it is not dangerous, it is cheap, it perfectly develops fine motor skills, the child immediately sees the result of his work, a wide selection of techniques. Modeling from salt dough develops a child's creative abilities, allowing him to fantasize and come up with new images.

How to make salt dough

Take two cups of flour, one cup of fine salt, stir well, add 2/3 cup of water, 0.5 cup of PVA glue, a dessert spoon of vegetable oil, knead until elastic (like dumpling dough). Store in plastic wrap in the refrigerator (or in plastic containers with a lid).

How to color salt dough

1st method: To color, first evenly divide the ingredients of the future dough into bowls, add environmentally friendly dye (gouache, food coloring), mix with flour, and then add water.

2nd method: paint finished figures with gouache after they are completely dry.

Drying salt dough crafts

1st method: dry the salt dough at normal temperature or on a radiator.

2nd method: dry in the oven at a temperature of 60-80 degrees for an hour if the craft is voluminous.

Advice: It is recommended to sculpt the craft immediately on a stand, on which the child’s work will then dry; if drying is planned in the oven, then you can use small iron trays or cardboard wrapped in food foil as a stand.

Workplace equipment

1. Plastic containers with an easy-to-open lid, since the surface of the dough dries out in the air and becomes cracked. During operation, the required amount of dough of a certain color is taken from the container, the rest is stored under a closed lid.

2. A bowl containing a cloth soaked in vegetable oil, which can be used to lubricate your hands and wipe tools so that the dough does not stick to them. If vegetable oil is added to the dough, then, as a rule, you can do without an “oil” napkin. The second way to prevent the dough from sticking is to use flour on your hands, a rolling pin, or a board.

3. Board, small rolling pins (making plates), a body for a marker, felt-tip pen (rolling tape).

4. Stacks (available in a set with plasticine), you can use them to cut out shapes and apply relief to crafts.

5. Fabric with a pronounced texture - to give relief to the craft (guipure, crinkled fabrics).

6. A set of beautiful beads, buttons, bugles, braid for imprinting into the dough, as well as making voluminous decorations (do not dry the craft in the oven with decorations made of artificial materials for safety reasons).

7. Brush, water for gluing individual parts, as well as repairing broken crafts.

8. Material for making the frame: jars, boxes, foil that can be crumpled into a certain shape, coils of wire, etc.

Step-by-step master classes on making crafts from salt dough with preschoolers

Lamb made from salt dough. Master class with step-by-step photos. Author: Sorokina Natalya Valerievna, additional education teacher, MBOUDO "DDT" Navashino, Nizhny Novgorod region Description: the master class is intended for children of preschool and primary school age, as well as for parents and teachers who are interested in creativity . Purpose: can be given as a gift, to decorate the interior of a room. Goal: making a figurine of a sheep from salt dough Objectives: - teach how to make a three-dimensional figurine of a belly...

Modeling from salt dough with children of primary preschool age. Master class with step-by-step photos Author: Komissarova Natalya Gennadievna, teacher at MBDOU No. 196, Izhevsk. Description: this master class is intended for children of primary preschool age, educators, additional education teachers, parents and other creative people. Purpose: this craft can be used to decorate a New Year tree and as a gift. Purpose: making a gift from salt dough “Mitten...

Candlestick made of salt dough for children 3-4 years old. Step-by-step instructions with photos Author: Komissarova Natalya Gennadievna, teacher at MBDOU No. 196, Izhevsk. Description: this master class is intended for children of primary preschool age, educators, additional education teachers, parents and other creative people. Purpose: The candlestick can be used to decorate the interior and as a gift. Goal: making a souvenir from salt dough. Tasks: - consolidate skills...

Salt dough pork. Step-by-step instructions with photos. Author: Natalya Valerievna Sorokina, additional education teacher, MBOUDO "DDT" Navashino, Nizhny Novgorod region Description: the master class is intended for children of senior preschool and primary school age, and can also be used in individual work with children with disabilities, for parents and teachers who are interested in creativity. Purpose: can be given as a gift in the form of a souvenir, used...

Pig" - a symbol of 2019 with your own hands. Master class with step-by-step photosAuthor: Svetlana Petrovna Semenova, teacher of the Children's Preschool Educational Institution "Ladushki" Kindergarten Purpose of the work: the craft can be used as a gift or souvenir for the New Year. Description: the master class is intended for children of senior preschool and school age, for teachers of preschool institutions and additional education, for lovers of creativity. Do you hear the door creaking? The pig is standing at the door! Friendly everyone...

Pig is a symbol of 2019 made from salt dough. A step-by-step master class with photo MK is intended for children with disabilities of III-IV types, but can be useful to all creative and gifted children and teachers. You can make a “pig” with a magnet and give it to your family as a gift, or you can thread a string and hang it on a Christmas tree. Goal: - development of creative imagination; - development of fine motor skills of the hands; - development of memory, attention and thinking; - development of the ability to work according to a template, from a photo. May the Pig bring you good luck, And provide...

Do-it-yourself aquarium made from salt dough for children 6-7 years old, step by step with photos. This material is intended for children of senior preschool age, teachers, parents and creative people. Purpose: subject development environment of kindergarten, creation of a board game. Goal: Development of graphomotor skills. Objectives: - develop fine motor skills, creative imagination, fantasy; - arouse interest in working with salt dough; - developing skills in working with salt dough; - educate ac...

Do-it-yourself piggy made from salt dough. The master class is designed for children 6-10 years old, kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers, parents, and creative people. Purpose: 2019 is the year of the earthen pig, this souvenir can be used all year round as a souvenir for acquaintances, friends, relatives. Purpose of the master class: To teach children how to make souvenirs from salt dough. Goal: To cultivate accuracy in work, attentiveness and love for arts and crafts, to develop...

Flower on a stick made of salt dough. Master class with step-by-step photos for beginners Author: Komissarova Natalya Gennadievna, teacher at MBDOU No. 196, Izhevsk. Description: this master class is intended for children of primary preschool age, educators, additional education teachers, parents and other creative people. Purpose: A flower on a stick can be used to decorate the interior and as a gift. Goal: making a souvenir from salt dough. Tasks: - complete...

Rowan from salt dough. Step-by-step master class for children 3-4 years old. Author: Komissarova Natalya Gennadievna, teacher at MBDOU No. 196, Izhevsk. Description: this master class is intended for children of primary preschool age, educators, additional education teachers, parents and other creative people. Goal: making a souvenir from salt dough. Objectives: - expand children’s understanding of the rowan berry. - strengthening the ability to roll out dough in a circular motion, tuck...

DIY Easter souvenir made from salt dough. A step-by-step master class with photo MK will be useful for special education teachers, preschool teachers and parents. Goal: acquaintance with the Orthodox holiday of Easter and the traditions of the Russian people. Objectives: - development of fantasy and creative imagination; - development of fine motor skills and sensory perception; Progress of the lesson. (Teacher's story with slide show). The Holy Resurrection of Christ is the most important Christian holiday. On this day, all Orthodox...

Duckling made from salt dough with step-by-step photos Author: Chizh Lyudmila Adverikovna, teacher at GBOU School No. 1373 ODO 4 in Moscow. Description: the master class is intended for children of senior preschool age, additional education teachers, and educators. Goal: making a duckling from salt dough. Objectives: 1. introduce children to salt dough as a material for work; 2. cultivate children's creativity; 3. develop fine motor skills of the hands; 4. formation of creative activity, artistic...

Didactic game "Beads as a gift." Master class with step-by-step photos. Author: Elena Vladimirovna Maksimova, teacher, MBDOU “Kindergarten No. 321” Samara. Description: I bring to your attention a master class on making a didactic game. This material is designed for preschool children, teachers, and parents. The beads are made from salt dough. Goal: development of general and fine motor skills of the hands. Objectives: - developing the ability to combine beads by color; - development of attention, perseverance...

Winter application from salt dough step by step with photos for children of the senior preparatory group Author: Svetlana Nikolaevna Babinova, teacher at MBDOU "Kindergarten No. 183" Description of the material: The material is intended for children of senior, preparatory preschool age, educators, preschool teachers, students. Purpose: can serve as an exhibition decoration, as well as a gift to family and friends. Goal: making crafts from salt dough. Necessary tools and materials...

Master class on making an insect from salt dough "Caterpillar" Author: Natalya Valerievna Sorokina, additional education teacher, MBOUDO "DDT" Navashino, Nizhny Novgorod region Description: the master class is intended for children of preschool and primary school age, as well as for parents and teachers who are passionate about creativity. Purpose: You can play with this craft, create your own collection of insects, or give it as a gift. Goal: making a caterpillar from salt dough Objectives: - teach...

A wonderful activity for a child is modeling from various materials. It perfectly develops the baby's fine motor skills. However, there is a drawback to this type of needlework - a child may accidentally eat the material. It follows that children are not recommended to work with clay and plasticine, but salt dough is very suitable! It is easy to use and safe for children.

The dough can be used to create any figures. Even one and a half year old children, under the supervision of their parents, can create their first masterpieces from it, and for older children this activity can become a real hobby.

Try to use your imagination together with your child and start making incredibly beautiful products.

How to make salt dough

Absolutely everyone can afford to prepare this material, because the ingredients for it are available in every kitchen.

To prepare salt dough you will need:

200g salt;
2 cups of flour;
an incomplete glass of water;
2 tablespoons of starch (if you are sculpting relief figures).

Mix salt with flour and, if necessary, starch, add water, mix, add one tablespoon of sunflower oil and start kneading. The dough should not crumble or stick to your hands - watch this, adjust the readiness of the dough with water and flour. Properly prepared dough should stick together well. Wrap the finished dough in a plastic bag and refrigerate for a couple of hours. After this you can start sculpting.

Drying salt dough products

The dough crafts you made need to be dried. This can be done in several ways.

You can simply place the figures in the room and leave them for a while. However, it is best to bake crafts in the oven. It should be noted that sculpting must be done in the same place where the figure will dry. It's ideal to use foil for this.

After finishing work on the craft, place it in a cold oven, first set the temperature to fifty degrees to avoid cracks. After thirty minutes, increase the temperature to one hundred degrees. Dry for an average of one to two hours.

After drying, sand the craft using sandpaper.

How to paint crafts made from salt dough

To paint figures, take paints with an acrylic base - they are most suitable for this. Such paints dry instantly, have a rich color and do not smell at all. However, such paints are quite expensive. Therefore, you can use gouache or watercolor paints.

You can also color the dough while kneading by adding a few drops of food coloring or acrylic paint, but do it in moderation. Regular cocoa powder is also good for coloring dough.

At the end of the work, the figurine is varnished. To do this, take a glossy or matte varnish with a water base.

Making salt dough with children

Owl

Take a spoon and use it to separate two parts of the dough. This will be the body and head of the owl. Make figures of the required shape from these pieces and fasten them together. Separately, take a strip of dough and make small cuts on it - this will be the collar. Place it on the body and use a knife to draw wings. Use the remaining small pieces of dough to make the eyes and beak. Dry the finished figurine and paint it to your liking.

Cat

First, divide the dough into individual parts. To make the body, you will need the largest piece of dough to make the head - a little smaller, use the rest to make the tail, face, paws, eyes and ears.

Roll out the dough into two circles and place them on cardboard. This will form the basis for the body and head of the cat. On a small circle we make a face from a separate piece of dough. Attach eyes, ears, tail, paws. Please note that each piece should be from three to five millimeters thick.

Dry the resulting cat in the oven. After that, we paint it black, and shade the tail, antennae and eyes with white, and finish the mouth with red.

Caterpillar

Separate small pieces from the salt dough and make balls of varying sizes from them. The head is a larger ball, the body is several small balls. The number of circles will determine the size of your caterpillar.

Fasten the resulting parts together. For better bonding, wet the contact areas with water. You can either make the caterpillar's face using sculpting or draw it. Simple matches are suitable for mustaches.

Dry the finished caterpillar in the oven and color it to your taste.

Hedgehog

First of all, take some kind of ball - this will be the basis for the body. It can be made of plastic, wood or any other material. Wrap this ball in an even layer of dough so that there are no holes.

Make the eyes and nose of the hedgehog in the same way using dough or use regular peppercorns.

This type of folk art became popular not so long ago, although its origins lie in the most ancient layers of Slavic culture. If you have doubts, then remember the same Kolobok: what is not an artistic product made from dough? Working with such a test is not only simple, but also accessible to everyone. Firstly, what kind of house doesn’t have a handful of flour, and secondly, this material is much more pliable than the same plaster, and much more durable than the plasticine everyone is used to. That's why salt dough crafts That's how we all fell in love.

Such wonderful sheep can decorate a Christmas tree.

If you add paint to the dough, you will get multi-colored products. It is best to use food coloring, for example, for coloring eggs.

Using stamps and paint, you can make designs on salt dough cookies.

According to some rumors, modeling from dough was invented by cooks who were bored with simply cooking. So they had fun, decorating their baked goods at the same time. But not only they appreciated the convenience of this material, its pleasantness to the touch and its flexibility to give it different shapes. Like most craft supplies, dough isn't very expensive. Just like from the same plasticine, anything your heart desires is molded from dough. Both paintings and salt dough figures can be placed on walls and shelves or used as toys. A picture with flowers made from this dough will be a great gift for friends. Today, like crafts made from a plastic bottle, products made from salt dough are becoming more and more popular, and therefore this direction of creativity needs detailed study and a theoretical basis for it.

Not only beads are suitable for decoration, but also natural materials: cereals and seeds.

Crafts made from salt dough are durable, which means they can decorate the interior for more than one month.

Recently, this art (and dough modeling is, without a doubt, an art) has even been given a separate name - testoplasty. But, despite the novelty of the name, no one will doubt that people began to sculpt figures from dough since the ancient times, when they first learned to make flour. The history of every civilization mentions dough modeling as an important part of religious rituals, folk art, and sacrifices. After all, both flour and water, and the bread obtained from them, are an important part of the culture of mankind as a whole. Working with dough, many manage to come up with their own names for this technique: flour sol, bioceramics and, of course, testoplasty. But no matter what they call it, the result often exceeds all possible expectations! When a masterpiece made from salt dough is born, it becomes a real event, because the soul invested in the craft returns a hundredfold greater return in the form of a living toy - salt dough figurines. Perhaps this is why salt dough has become such a popular creative material for children of all ages. Like plasticine, products made from salt dough allow modeling of any complexity.

With proper skill, you can make such an owl.

To paint the owlet, you can use gouache, and you can fix it with manicure glue.

Today no one can say exactly how many centuries testoplasty has existed. But during this time, the procedure for working with salted dough has not changed at all. Same water and flour. And to preserve the craft from various pests, salt is added.

You can learn about the features of working with salt dough from many websites. But if you yourself have been modeling from salt dough for quite some time, then you also have accumulated experience working with this material, there are examples of work, photographs of products that can be posted on similar Internet pages. You can also create your own blogs and even websites dedicated to this art. Believe me, with the current popularity of testoplasty, your developments will be of interest to many like-minded people. At a minimum, on thematic sites they will create a personal author’s gallery for you. And even if your photographic work is not a model of perfection, professionals will bring it to mind and present it in the best light.

For Christmas decor, you can make toys from salt dough.

Fortunately, the times when dough figures were used only as sacred objects are long gone. The eras of famine and war have passed. Folk “mucosalt” gradually turned into newfangled “bioceramics”. The oldest decorative craft began to be revived as an independent applied art. Today, testoplasty is gaining more and more popularity in vocational schools and clubs. Everyone who became familiar with this art appreciated salt dough as a plastic and warm material, as well as a source of great pleasure from working with it. A big plus in its favor is the availability of the material for home use.

Salt dough is a very plastic material. You can make flowers and people from it.

These are the beautiful hearts you can make for Valentine's Day.

Angels and hearts will come in handy for Easter.

To independently make crafts from salt dough, you can preview several master classes on the Internet. You can read step-by-step instructions, and also get acquainted with photo collections of works made from salt dough offered on various websites. This will help you gain additional inspiration for subsequent actions.

It is best to make crafts from salt dough with children.

For salted dough you will need water, flour and, in fact, salt.

As for the recipe for the dough itself, it is standard for ordinary three-dimensional figures:

Flour - 200 grams or 1 cup,
Salt - 200 grams or half a glass,
Water - 125 milligrams.

It should be noted that salt is much heavier than the same volume of flour. And therefore, with the same weight, they differ in volume: salt is taken approximately half as much by weight as flour.

*And for embossed thin figures, you can choose to add 15 grams of PVA glue (one tablespoon), one tablespoon of starch or wallpaper glue, which must first be mixed with water.

*There are separate recipes for strong dough for large products: one glass of flour and salt (200 and 400 grams, respectively) and 125 milliliters of water.

*Experts also offer a dough recipe for delicate work: flour - 300 grams, salt - 200 grams, glycerin - 4 tablespoons (you can buy it at the pharmacy), glue for light wallpaper - 2 tablespoons and water - 125 milliliters (you need it first mix with glue).

To facilitate the process of kneading the dough, it is better to use a mixer, which will not only greatly simplify the task, but will also make the dough much better.

To make colored dough, you can use both food dyes and aniline, but the simplest and most accessible are watercolor and gouache. An excellent chocolate color will be obtained by adding cocoa to the dough. When choosing a shade, you should take into account that during the drying process the tone will become less saturated, but when you coat the craft with varnish, the color will again return to its former brightness.

Salted dough for crafts is made in exactly the same way as for dumplings, with the difference that the components differ in content.

The dough should be tight and elastic.

Tip: let the dough sit for a few minutes.

Form cookies using stencils.

Stock up on cookie decor stamps.

Lightly wet the stamp and scoop out the glitter.

Now transfer the decor to the cookies.

Don't forget to use beads, grains and rhinestones for decoration.

Now is the time to put the cookies in the oven.

But here's another important detail: make a hole in the cookie to insert the ribbon and attach it to the tree.

And now - into the oven.

You can decorate cookies with multi-colored powder and shiny varnish.

By the way, many masters recommend adding a little vegetable oil or hand cream (approximately 1 tablespoon) to the dough, which can give the dough additional plasticity. It is also recommended to replace water with jelly made from starch - potato or corn (dissolve one tablespoon of starch in half a glass of cool water; then pour a glass of boiling water into the starch with constant stirring; after the jelly has thickened and become transparent, the resulting paste should be remove from the stove.) The dough will benefit from the paste, because it will become even more plastic. But you should not overdo it, and if the dough turns out to be too soft, you will have to mix it again with a small additional amount of salt and flour. The salted dough needs to be given more density. There are also tips to place salted dough in a plastic bag for 2 hours in the refrigerator. There it can be stored for later use.

Salt dough can be used to make an excellent decoration for the kitchen.

For crafts, stock up on gouache or colored varnish.

Salt dough makes wonderful souvenirs.

Making crafts from salt dough

You can start working with this material by doing autumn crafts from salt dough. After all, autumn is extremely rich not only in forms to imitate in the form of ripened fruits, but also in various natural materials that can be included in a product as a full-fledged element, as well as a rethought symbolic image of some part of nature or a certain image. You can make a kind of still life in the form of a painting or bas-relief with the same apples, pears, pumpkins and other fruits and vegetables. Or you can make three-dimensional crafts and place them on a plate or a special stand. You can make an entire installation “Autumn Garden and Vegetable Garden” with the same fruits, or you can play with the theme of the autumn forest. In this case, along with salt dough, you can also use natural elements - cones, acorns, spruce and pine needles. Using the same technique, you can stage a fairy-tale or fantasy plot. Any autumn theme - a branch of rowan, a carpet of fallen leaves, birds flying south - can be embodied with the help of salt dough.

Be sure to involve children in sculpting.

From the master class you will see how to make a Christmas garland and beautiful Santa Clauses.

After the cookies are ready, start painting them. Don't forget to make holes.

How to do it correctly salt dough crafts, step by step presented in step-by-step instructions, of which there are a huge number on the Internet. What is needed for such creativity? Literally anything that is unnecessarily collecting dust around the house can be useful.

To begin with, the most important items: a stack or knife, a rolling pin and a comb, which can be useful, for example, for making a basket. You will also need an ordinary pen, especially its rod, which is convenient for making various holes and dots in patterns, cheese holes, eyes and much more.
When decorating crafts, as well as for exciting games with children, shaped knives for cutting cookies or ready-made sets of shaped recesses for plasticine can be useful.
Next, you should select everything in the house that can be used to make prints, for example:

voluminous buttons, hairpins, pieces of burlap, embossed lace, beads, rings, small children's toys, cake candle stands, forks and spoons, the handles of which can be decorated with relief patterns, the soles of children's shoes (will also give interesting patterns), mixer parts and much more other inconspicuous little things.

To prepare salt dough, flour and salt are mixed, water is added to them, and the dough is kneaded. The degree of its readiness is determined only by the feeling of the hands. If it crumbles, add water. If, on the contrary, it stretches too softly and sticks to your hands, then there is a lot of water in it, and, accordingly, you need to add a little flour. For testing, roll a ball and make several small indentations in it with your finger. A dough that does not spread and holds its shape can be considered ready. When kneading, it is recommended to add oil, for example, vegetable oil. Thanks to this, the dough will not only not stick to your hands and dry out too quickly, but will also not become crusty during work. True, you need to remember that too good is also not good: if you add a lot of oil, the dough will begin to get dirty, and its final drying will take too long. And paints will be difficult to apply to it.
Well, the dough is ready, now you can proceed directly to the process of modeling salt dough. It is better to make it on a board or tray: this will immediately be a good place for the dough to dry.
In order to make the salt dough colored, it can be painted at the kneading stage itself, using food paint or gouache, which will be safe when working with small children. You can also paint the finished dried product. And in order to prepare the right color, you can use the following diagram:

blue color is obtained by mixing blue and white,

pink color is obtained by mixing white and red,

we get purple color by mixing blue and pink,

green color comes from mixing blue and yellow,

orange color will come out when mixing yellow and red,

brown color is obtained by mixing green and red,

emerald color is obtained by mixing green and blue,

for flesh color you need to mix light pink with a drop of yellow,

and golden and silver colors will be obtained if you add gouache or acrylic of the appropriate color to it, you can also make dough with glitter by adding a gel with glitter for gouache.

Drying is carried out either in the fresh air under natural conditions, which can take too long, or in the oven, subject to certain rules:

the temperature in the oven should be minimal;
The oven lid should be slightly open;
The product cannot be placed immediately in a hot oven; it must be heated gradually. You can’t take the craft out of the oven suddenly; it’s better to wait until it gradually cools down along with the temperature of the oven itself;
It would be ideal to carry out drying in several main stages: after an hour of drying on one side, the craft should be turned over and allowed to dry from the inside out. You can also take breaks during the drying process: dry in the oven for an hour, and then in the air for a day, and again for an hour in the oven, but on the reverse side, and then in the air for a day;
The drying time of the product largely depends on the size of the craft itself.

require final finishing. After drying, the craft can be slightly browned in the oven, which will give it a natural shade. For decoration, the product is painted and varnished. When working with dough, use any paints: acrylic, watercolor, gouache - that is, those with which you like to work most. Acrylic or artistic varnish is used. You can also use an ordinary construction one, but with a water base, which can be used on breathable surfaces - parquet or wood. To make some small details in a craft more expressive, you can even paint them with nail polish, which usually gives a bright glossy color.

Finishing children's crafts made from salt dough, parents are often faced with receiving defective, low-quality results. This can happen due to common mistakes that should be avoided at the preparation stage. For example:

pancake flour or with some additives cannot be used for making crafts from salt dough, since the figures made from it will begin to rise during drying, like yeast dough for pies, and the craft will crack;
iodized salt also cannot be used, since large inclusions of it will not dissolve, and subsequently the texture of the dough will be uneven, as if it were a grain;
water should be used very cold and added in parts, fifty milliliters for each addition, after which thorough kneading should be carried out, which is associated with the likelihood of using different types of flour, which require different volumes of water;
the salt must first be mixed with flour and only then water must be poured into the prepared mass;
salt dough can be stored in a plastic bag or in a tightly closed container. It is best to take this dough out of the bag in small slices, because they can very quickly become crusty, and when rolled out or molded, these crusts can ruin the entire appearance of the product;
if cracking or swelling of a salt dough product occurs, this can be explained by incorrectly selected flour: the simpler it is and without additives, the better it is for the dough and the future craft;
You can also add rye flour to the dough: although the color will be grayer and warmer, it should not cause any cracking. A simple recipe - a glass of plain flour and a glass of rye flour, 50 grams of starch, which will also give the dough elasticity and prevent it from cracking. You can also add a spoonful of ordinary PVA glue to the dough, which adds plasticity and prevents the dough from rising;
Crafts made from salt dough can also crack if not dried properly. As mentioned earlier, the product dries better in the air, although it takes a long time, but you want to get the result faster. Therefore, drying is most often carried out in three stages: first in the oven at the lowest temperature and with the lid open for about an hour, then a break is taken for two hours, or even overnight, when the craft dries itself, then the oven is turned on again at the minimum temperature with the lid open cover;
when cracking appears after painting, it means that the craft is not completely dry. At the same time, the product continued to dry, and the air had no place to go, which is why the surface of the varnish or paint cracked. There is no need to rush to paint or varnish the craft, otherwise you will have to regret it later or even redo it;
if the figure turns out to be thick, more than 7 millimeters, then at the first stage you need to take out the excess dough on the back side;
during drying, the craft must be rotated at all stages: it dries for an hour on the front side, rests, then the craft must be turned over and dried on the back side;
fallen parts can be reattached remarkably and discreetly using PVA glue.

To make the dough elastic, add PVA glue to it.

Just like real starfish.

Very beautiful spring birds.

These New Year's decorations are no worse than plastic ones.

Interesting figures made from salt dough

This type of decorative art allows you to perform volumetric very realistically. crafts. Salt dough flowers- favorite products, especially for women, and for schoolgirls too. It’s very easy to make, for example, the same daisies by rolling out the dough ahead of time and making identical petals with notches. You can make them by rolling out identical “sausages” and using them, slightly flattening them, to form many petals for a flower. The centers are made from a flattened ball of dough. Twigs and leaves can be replaced with natural thuja twigs, similar to real chamomile leaves. And you can place flowers in a basket woven from “sausages” from the same salted dough. You need to paint the flowers and the basket using the simple technology given above.

This cat is the bright embodiment of Halloween.

You can make funny animal figures from salt dough. For example, such a cute tiger.

Fish and seals.

Favorite for cat lovers crafts - salt dough cats. This is generally a fertile topic in any form of creativity - in the visual arts, in literature, and even in music. After all, this graceful, wayward pet cannot but delight and inspire, especially creative people. To make your favorite Ryzhik from dough, you can go the route of decorative primitivism, or you can try to make a more believable cat. True, its dimensions will be small, because the possibilities of making products from salt dough are limited by the need to maintain the proper thickness permissible for uniform drying of the craft. Well, everything else is a matter of technique!

It is interesting to make owls, hares and baskets from dough.

The most easy crafts from salt dough can be done by rolling out a sheet and cutting it into different flat shapes using notches. The advantage of this method is the speed of production of a large number of different items, as well as its minimal thickness, which will speed up the drying process and protect against subsequent deformation. This technique most of all allows the use of different presses and impressions. Using a similar principle, you can make a children's mosaic. To do this, you need to roll out a lot of “sausages” and leave them to dry overnight. In the morning, chips are cut from the “sausages” and again left overnight. Again in the morning, a layer of dough is rolled out and given the correct shape (circle or rectangle). Then the chips are inserted into the fresh dough so that they leave indentations, and are immediately removed. The chips are painted in different colors, after which both the layer and the chips are left to dry.

Figures made from salt dough can be decorated with rhinestones and beads.

- this is not only simple fun, but also a serious correctional activity that allows you to develop children’s fine motor skills, their perseverance, observation, creative imagination and cultivate their aesthetic tastes. And for adults, this is an excellent way to find peace and recover from the constant bustle, even if it is highly meaningful. And believe me: you only have to try it once - and you will surely grow to love this art with all your soul. And may your creativity be a joy to you!