Does your little one love Trolls? My kids LOVE the Dreamworks Trolls movie, so I thought it would be a fun Christmas craft to make our own Trolls ornament from salt dough.
Salt Dough Handprint Trolls Ornament
A few year ago, I made salt dough ornaments with my son. They were a HIT! He loved making them and helping me paint. We even made super cute Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ornaments because he was so into them at the time. This year, he loves Trolls. So, when we were making our salt dough recipe he asked me if we could make a Trolls ornament. Of course, we could!
These are super easy to make and you probably have the ingredients on hand. You'll just need to make sure to grab some paint, brushes (multiple sizes so you can do some detail work), ribbon, and googly eyes. I also like to bake mine on silicone baking mats. They're non-stick and makes things so much easier.
Just grab our salt dough ornament recipe and mix up a batch. One batch should make several handprints. This batch netted us 6 handprints and 3 footprints.
Once you've made your dough, imprinted your child's handprint, then baked it, you'll be ready to go. I started by making Poppy. I mixed red and white paint to make 2 shades of pink and then started with her face and hair. Actually, FIRST, you should paint the front of the ornament white. I usually do that but forgot this time. I ended up painting the outer part of the ornament while after the fact and had to be a bit careful.
I made the pinky and thumb her ears, then used the 3 middle fingers for her Troll hair. I just free-handed this based off of a Google image search. Don't mind that long brush on the side of the photo, I was just using that to mix paint. You'll need much shorter brushes to get the detail you need here. Something like THIS SET would work great. I have a similar set and mainly use the flat tip brushes on the right side.
While she was drying, I started Branch. For him, I mixed royal blue paint with a little black for his hair, then royal blue with white for his face and ears. I made his "thumb and pinky ears" a little shorter than hers. Then, I painted their noses and let dry.
Once the paint was dry, I super glued "Googly Eyes" onto the faces. You could definitely just use paint to do this part, but we like the wiggly eyes.
Then I added eyebrows, a mouth, and eyelashes. Lastly, I added her flower headband. Once she was all dry, I painted the around the perimeter of the ornament to make it white and bright. I usually do this first, but I'd forgotten this time.
Then, just add ribbon! Don't forget to also write your child's name on the back and add the date so you can remember how old they were when they made this.
Check out our other salt dough ornaments:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ornaments
The Trolls logo is copyright Dreamworks.
Amber Ludwig says
They are so adorable!! My son would love doing this!! We made turkeys for family last year. Maybe this year we'll do these for our tree!!
Julie Wood says
These ornaments are so cute and my kids would love if I made them for them. Thanks for the idea. They look great on the tree.