Salt dough hearts for loved ones this Valentine’s day with a Toddler

I am always looking for something to create, whether it is with my 19 year old daughter, or with my 3 year old granddaughter.

Today I had my granddaughter for the day and knew I wanted to do something for Valentine’s day. But what was an easy craft to do with an impatient toddler?

I then remembered making salt dough ornaments with my own daughter years ago, and decided to make some again!

You will need the following:

Flour

Salt and Water

Crayola washable paints for little one, and Craft paint in Valentine colors for you!

Paint brushes

Heart cookie cutters

Twine to tie to hearts

and patience.

Also a printed sheet of “love you” phrases… please scroll to bottom when you are ready to print one.

I searched online, and found a great recipe for salt dough on food.com. Here is the link to find the full recipe: Salt Dough Recipe – Food.com

The recipe from their site is as follows:

2 cups of flour, (all purpose will work, but regular flour would be best)

1 Cup of salt

1 cup of water

Add dry ingredients to bowl, then slowly add water to make dough.

Knead it for a while to make it a bit smoother, then roll the dough out with your toddler and make shapes.

Tip: While I made the dough, I gave my granddaughter a box of cookie cutters and asked her to find the heart ones. This kept her busy, and gave me time to prepare dough.

After we rolled and cut the dough out, I baked them for about a half an hour at 325 degrees.

If yours are thick, you will need to bake them longer. If they puff up a bit, I also recommend pushing them down to flatten them.

If you are just making hearts you can just bake them. If you want to make them hang on a string, you will have to now poke a hole into each heart, so that way you can tie them with twine. I used a hard straw, which I do not recommend, as I had a heck of a time getting the dough out after. (I always learn the hard way first)

Once baked, we left them out for a while on oven to cool. We played, or rather tried to play Candyland while we waited.

Once they were cool enough to work with, we painted them. She used crayola washable paints, and I used craft paints. She painted about 7, I painted about 15-20. I painted very quickly as I knew she would not have a long attention span.

We cleaned up from painting, and while we did this, the paint had time to dry on the hearts.

I took the printed sheet of ” love you”, and tore out sections of it for her. I tried to keep the words together but sometimes not. So it was a mixture of the phrase and just words. I suggest tearing them carefully rather than cutting, as it is a rougher, more country look.

I then opened the modge podge and lightly brushed the heart we were working on with the glue, she placed the ripped papers onto the heart, and I went over it with the modge podge. Teamwork!

I let them dry, then tied them with a piece of twine for hanging.

And below is the final result.

We used her finger print for the dots that you see on the one above.

The result are some cute farmhouse style valentine hearts!

I also made a garland of smaller hearts, which are shown in the first photo.

Hope you make some with your little ones!

Below is image of text to print to use as mixed media.