I love to memorialize my kids' footprints in at least some way each year. This year we made salt dough ornaments for the first time and we will definitely continue this tradition every Christmas! There are so many fun ways to paint a footprint that we will have ideas for years to come. This year, our kids love foxes and we thought it would be fun to commemorate that with salt dough footprints. Check out how to make homemade ornaments below!
How to Make Homemade Ornaments
To make these adorable foxes, we started off with this salt dough ornament recipe. Then we made a variety of handprints and footprints, because we want to give some of these out as gifts this year. We made two different batches of the salt dough. I would recommend rolling the dough out to be fairly thin (no thicker than ¼ inch). We made our first batch thicker and they took FOREVER to bake. The second batch we made sure to roll the dough out thinner and they baked much faster. Plus, we were able to get more prints out of our dough.
After the ornaments finished baking and cooling, I painted them white to have a fresh starting palette. For your own homemade ornaments, you'll need paint brushes and acrylic paint to finish them off. Silicone baking mats can also make things easier if you want a mess-free baking process!
To paint the foxes, I just looked up an image of a fox and free-hand painted it. Our kids love foxes and I think they're adorable, too. When I was cutting these ornaments out (before baking them) I left a little edge to paint the tail on the ornament.
I added the white chest fur and details on the ears, though next time I would consider doing a couple layers of white. The salt dough soaks up the paint fairly quickly and it dries within minutes. Don't forget to add the white to the fox tails!
I added a few details to the foxes and I think they came out pretty cute! We looped some ribbon through the holes and hung them on our tree. The kids love telling all our visitors that those are their feet and I can't wait to add more to our tree. Time goes so quickly with kids, and it's nice to have some tangible memories of how little they once were!
If you're looking for other salt dough ornament ideas, you've come to the right place!
Check out our other Salt Dough Ornaments:
Monsters Inc Salt Dough Ornaments
Also, check out our Trolls ornaments
Dumbo Salt Dough Handprint Ornament
And, our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Salt Dough Ornaments too!
Julie Wood says
I think these ornaments are so adorable and fun to put on the tree and have displayed with babies footprints. I need to do this craft!
Amber Ludwig says
I just love these!! I love the idea of doing them every year!! What amazing memories they will make!! We forget when we were ever that small sometimes!! I love the cute ideas you turn them into too!! We love foxes as well!!
DealinDiva says
Thank you for the ideas, we'll be trying these out this weekend.
shelly peterson says
These ornaments are so cute. These would be fun to do with my grandsons.
Robin Creager says
These look like so much fun to do! I better do these with my g-son before he gets too old..lol. His brother will be turning 1 yr old by the time the holidays roll around again, I can get both their foot and handprint ornaments made. So many different ideas! Thanks for sharing this!