Salt Dough Sunflower Handprint Keepsake

We have recently planted our Sunflower seeds and Little N checks each day to see if there is any sign of them sprouting above the soil yet. It wont be long now and then we get to plant them out in the garden and our Sunflower competition begins - Who can grow the biggest Sunflower.

The sun has been out and we have been enjoying lots of time in the garden, but the good old British weather means we have gone from applying the factor 50 and getting to swimming pools out in the garden to needing our wellies and umbrellas!


Little N asked if we could go and make something in the kitchen so we started making yet another batch of Salt Dough.

We love Salt Dough (as I am sure you know by now)!

Today we made some Sunflower Salt Dough Hand print Keepsakes.

To make some too you will need:
A batch of Salt Dough
Acrylic Paint
Paintbrushes
Varnish
Sunflower Seeds


Start off by making a batch of Salt Dough. Depending on how big your childrens hands are this mixture should make at least 2 of these keepsakes.

Roll out the dough till its around 1cm thick. You don't want it too thick as it will take a long time to dry out but you dont want it thin so it crumbles. Press down hand prints, slightly overlapping.


You can either air dry on a flat surface or pop them in the oven on a low gas mark and keep a close eye on them.

Once it's fully dried out you can set about painting your creation.

Make sure you seal your creation using varnish. This will keep out the water and stop your keepsake from going moldy. The keepsakes will last for years and years as long as you seal it well.


We added some sunflower seeds to the center of the hand prints and it looked really effective!!


You could add them to the center of your keepsakes as a bird feeder for the garden, or stick them down and have them as a fun decoration for the house.

At the moment we are keeping ours inside and I love the vibrant yellow against the sky blue! I do really like the idea of using it as a bird feeder though! We have lots of birds that come to our existing feeders in the garden so it would be interesting to see what they make of it!

We have made lots of keepsakes using Salt Dough over the past year!
We have a creation near enough for every celebration and season!