Painted salt-dough artworks

Mr Sociable loves to paint and, as he gets older, it is becoming easier to do. When he was younger, painting meant a huge amount of clean-up - paint on his hands, paint on the table, paint on the sink... But now, painting is relatively painless, so I'm much more enthusiastic about doing it! 

Today, we made salt-dough artworks for the first time. I got the idea from a friend's facebook page & it was a big hit with Mr Sociable!

 

First, we mixed the dough. The recipe is:

1 part salt

1 part warm water

2 parts plain flour

He couldn't wait to get his hands dirty!

Mr Sociable kneaded the dough and made it into shapes (a useful tip is to create the artworks directly on a silicone baking sheet - that way it's ready to go straight in the oven). Mr Fun just wanted to eat the dough, so I gave him a choc/zucchini muffin to eat while Mr Sociable played with dough!

Yum, yum, yum!

He made a rock (which he made independently), a tree (which we made together) and a lady (which I made and then he modified to be more anatomically correct!).

A tree, a rock and a lady.

We baked them at 160 degrees C (fan-forced). It took about an hour for them to go hard (they have the consistency of a rock when finished!)

Ready to paint!