Salt Dough Cornucopia
Date Submitted: March 28, 2006
With just a few simple ingredients you can create this fun Salt Dough Cornucopia for your Thanksgiving day celebration. 
Materials:
- Salt dough recipe (below)
- Craft Bond gloss finish decoupage
- Paintbrush
- Glue gun
- Acrylic paints: brown, yellow, orange, green, red and purple
Salt Dough
- 2 cups all-purpose white flour
- 1 cup salt
- 1 cup boiling water
Combine boiling water and salt in a bowl. Mix well. Slowly mix in 2 cups of flour. Place dough on work surface and wearing plastic gloves, knead it until smooth. If dough is sticky, continue adding small amounts of flour. Instructions
Make dough recipe (above). To color the dough, work small amounts of paint into the dough until desired color is achieved. You may have to work in a little flour when adding paint to keep the dough from being too sticky. The dough should be slightly sticky but easy to shape. Create the following pieces:
1 cornucopia, 2 pumpkins, 2 crookneck squash, 2 bunches of grapes, 2 apples, 2 ears of corn, 5 carrots and 2 loaves of bread.  Cornucopia:
Using brown clay, mold a cone shape about 4 1/2-inches long and 2 1/4- inches in diameter at wide end. Mark lines 1/2-inch apart along sides from wide end to narrow end. Press in the wide end so the cone is slightly caved (see fig. 1) Roll 2 - 1/4 x 8 – inch snakes. Twist snakes together and attach around wide edge. Cut off excess. Bend slightly so the cone is C-shaped.  Pumpkin:
Using orange clay, form a 1 1/4-inch ball. Mark 8 lines with a butter knife from center top to center bottom of ball. Using the bottom end of the knife, press a dent in the center top of the ball. Make a ½-inch cone shape with green clay. Stick the point of cone in the indent at the top of the pumpkin (stem). Roll a small snake with brown clay. Twist the snake slightly and stick one end into the indent with the stem.  Crookneck squash:
Using yellow clay, roll out a 1 1/4-inch oval making one end narrow and one end fat. Bend the narrow end slightly.  Grapes:
Using green clay, roll a 1-inch narrow snake. Twist into a spiral. Using purple clay roll approximately 20 3/16-inch balls. Shape balls into a triangle and stick the green spiral into the fat end of triangle.  Apple:
Using red clay, roll a ¾-inch ball. Using bottom end of butter knife, press a dent in the top of apple. Using brown roll a 5/16-inch triangle and stick the point into the dent in the apple. Using green form a small leaf and stick one end of the leaf into the dent in the apple.  Corn:
Using yellow clay, roll a 1 1/2 x 3/8-inch oval. Using a butter knife, mark lines lengthwise and widthwise in checkerboard fashion. Using green clay, shape 5-6 leaves of various lengths. Layer leaves around one end of the corn. Press bottom of leaves together to form a point.  Carrot:
Using orange clay, roll a 1 1/4-inch snake. Make one end into a point. Poke the other end with the tong of a fork to create a dent. Using green clay, create 3-4 very small snakes. Pinch these snakes at one end and poke the pinched end into the dent in the carrot.  Bread:
Using tan clay, roll a 2 1/2-inch oval. Make slanted slits across the top of the bread. Finishing:
Bake figures in a 200 ° oven for 1/2-hour for every 1/4-inch thickness. Bake pieces until they are completely hard. Let cool.
Paint decoupage finish on each piece. Let dry.
Arrange pieces and glue together with a glue gun.
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