Simple Salt Dough

This is all you need to make salt dough: flour, salt, water and a big bowl.

Put 2 c of flour in a bowl. Add 1/2 c of table salt. (Don't use kosher salt or other large-grained salt for this project.) Also -- I typically make a double batch, which works just fine. My project for today is small, so I kept the batch small, too.

Add 3/4 cup of water.

Use your hands to mix the dough.

Continue mixing with your hands until the dough looks like this. Put it on a countertop and knead it until it's smooth.

Now you're ready to shape, twist, form and mold your salt dough. Today, I'm rolling it out like pie dough.

You can use almost anything as a tool. An icing tip and a soda bottle cap worked perfectly for what I had in mind here.

I used a toothpick to poke holes in the circles, and voila! Buttons for a snowman. (It was 109 degrees outside when I was working on this. Maybe that's why I felt a need to make a snowman!) Bake the salt dough at low temperatures until the pieces are hard and dry. You can paint the finished pieces or just spray them with a poly finish. These buttons are destined for coats of glitter.