Salt Dough Napkin Ring

I am guest designing for Avocado Arts this month. They have released an adorable new set titled "Gobble Until You Wobble". If that title has you thinking turkey, then you're on the right track. I'm back again today to share another project I made using this set. I've gotta tell you that this one took me for a stroll down memory lane.

One of the fond memories from my childhood was when my mom would throw together a batch of salt dough for me and my sisters to play with. She would sit down with us and help us roll, cut, smooth and decorate to our little hearts content. Usually, we would create one-of-a-kind Christmas ornaments that we could decorate and then lovingly hang on our tree. If you've never made salt dough, you're missing out. It's so easy to make and can provide hours of amusement for your children.

I knew I wanted to make a napkin ring of some sort using this set. Originally, I was just going to use paper, but when I stumbled upon this Salt Dough recipe on pinterest, I knew I wanted to use it to create my turkey napkin ring. So, armed with the recipe above, I set upon a fun little adventure. I began by recruiting the help of my 5-yr old, who, in turn, giggled throughout the entire process. She sure did get a kick out of squishing the dough between her fingers and then kneading it out.

 Once she was finished, we rolled it out together using the rolling pin and then I shooed her away for the more "grown-up" part. So, here were the steps I followed to use my stamps on the dough (and I do apologize for not having photos, but sometimes I get so caught up in the process that I forget to snap them)

• I started by pressing the feather outline stamp into the dough as a rough guideline
• Then, I took an xacto knife and cut along that line to create a dough feather
• I then pressed the feather accents stamp into what I cut out; I created 5 of them and layered them all together in a fanned out shape
• I then followed the same process using the turkey body. I stamped it once, cut around it and then stamped again just to make sure the parts were really visible.
• I placed the body on top of the feathers, and then filled in a little bit of extra dough behind the lower half of the body to hold it up so it was at the same level with the feathers (this is the part I wish I would've been more careful with; you will see in the picture that the extra dough I put in was kinda ugly)
• I threw him into the oven at 300 degrees and he came out a half hour later looking like this:

(He's as naked as the bird on Thanksgiving morning before he gets all the trimmings, right?)

I then set to work on making him look pretty with paint. I just used plain old acrylics with a brush. I had one pretty small brush for the smaller detailed areas. This is what the whole thing looks like when painted:

You can see that to make it into a napkin ring, I added a burlap circle. I simply folded my piece of burlap into thirds and stitched through the middle of it. I then hot glued it to the back of the turkey. I topped him off with his little tag sign that I thought seemed more than appropriate!

And there you have it, your very own, custom made napkin ring for Thanksgiving day and all of it started from a few clear stamps and an old tradition I had with my mom.

Again, many thanks to Avocado Arts for allowing me to design with them this month! Be sure to check out their products and news on their blog. Thanks for stopping in today and for allowing me to share a few projects of thanks with you!