Handmade Dough Ornaments: Epic Fail

Over the course of the next week or so I was going to make and show you all of the lovely dough ornaments I've found and pinned since the last holiday season:

Cinnamon dough (source)

Corn starch dough (source)

Salt dough (source)

All of these types of dough have few ingredients and then you roll them out and cut them with cutters and press shapes into them.  Not bad, right?  Easy enough that Gus and I could make them and it would be a fun project, right?  Right??

Wrong.  I have determined that unless you are able to work in a closed environment with no other people around, and you have the entire Martha Stewart craft collection (for every possible media) and a really steady hand, these are not easy or fun.  Gus and I only got so far as the cinnamon and corn starch dough so I can't tell you anything about the salt dough, but let's just say that both seemed to mix up ok but then when it came time to roll them, they were sticking to everything and no combination of adding extra this or that seemed to help.  We only had one round biscuit cutter because I thought we had others but apparently we didn't, and we tried stamping them but that was a mild disaster.  It just didn't work for us.

Does this mean you shouldn't give the dough ornaments a try?  Not necessarily.  You may have a more suitable environment and more patience than I.  You may be kid-free.  You may actually be Martha Stewart.  And in those cases, I'm sure these will turn out just like the pictures.

As for us, we managed to salvage a few, which became decorations for the preschool teachers' gifts:

Not beautiful or perfect, but handmade with love and frustration nonetheless.