Knights and castles can be made easily and cheaply with salt dough, thus avoiding plastic models in the children’s room and at the same time promoting the creativity of the little ones.
What you need:
- 2 glasses of flour
- 2 glasses of salt
- 1/2 glass of water
- 2 tbsp wallpaper paste
- hairspray
- easter egg colors
Make castles and figures out of salt dough
With salt dough you can easily and cheaply design your own toys. Castles and the matching accessories such as knights can also be quickly made yourself.
Salt dough can be modeled like modeling clay. With simple ingredients that you usually have at home and a few paints, you can quickly create a castle with knights and other accessories.
The wallpaper paste causes the dough to become harder and you can model better with it. Make sure your kids don’t eat the dough. It tastes inedible and is also dangerous due to the addition of paste.
To color the dough, you can simply paint the finished objects with Easter egg or food coloring.
Or you can make colored salt dough from natural materials. For example, adding cocoa turns the dough brown or adding jelly powder makes it green. Adding beetroot juice turns the dough red and ink makes it blue.
Whether you decide to color the dough or paint it later is a matter of taste. The fact is that the colored dough fades during baking.
Little tricks for making castles and knights
When it comes to modeling the castles and knights, your creativity is required. As a model, you can orientate yourself, for example, on castles from toy manufacturers such as Playmobil or Mattel. Depending on the size of the castle, you will need to use tools such as small wooden sticks that you need to support the castle walls.
When crafting the knights, more sensitivity is required, since the figures are small and subtleties such as the knight’s armor or the contours of the face must be carefully crafted.
You can use tools such as a knife tip, the impression of a spoon handle or whatever else you have for ideas.
After you have made the figures and castles, the salt dough has to dry for a day or two. It is best to put it in a warm place.
Then the objects go into the oven. Place them on parchment paper. You can also brush the castles and figures with egg yolk or condensed milk to give them a shine after baking.
Altogether you have to reckon with a baking time of five hours. It is worth gradually increasing the temperature of the oven. Start with 60 degrees for the first hour. In the second with 80 degrees, in the third with 100 degrees, in the fourth with 120 degrees and in the fifth with 140 degrees. This elevation ensures that the dough does not crack.
Once you take the objects out of the oven, let them cool. Then you can spray hairspray over them so they are preserved and don’t retain moisture which leads to mold .