DIY Salt Dough Paw Print

For the DogBlog Stick Challenge I recently drew the stick with ‘Make a Salt Dough Paw Print’. Super cool! We had loads of fun with it, and today I’m sharing my DIY adventure here on the blog.

What do you need

• Flour
• Salt
• Water
• Optional: acrylic paint (I used Metallic acrylic paint from ‘Amsterdam’ brand)

What to do

Preheat the oven to 100-120 degrees Celsius.

For my five paw prints (one from each dog) I took a mug, which I filled twice with flour. I put this in a bowl, and added 1 mug full of salt. I put 1 mug full of water next to it. So you can easily adjust the proportions if you want to make more or less:

2 parts flour, 1 part water, 1 part salt

First I mixed the flour and salt together, then added the water, one tablespoon at a time. Continue to stir/knead after adding a tablespoon of water until you can form a firm ball.
I then divided the dough into five balls, which I pressed into round flat discs. Then I (carefully!) pressed the dog’s paw into it. After making the impression, wipe the dog’s paw with a damp cloth, you don’t want to leave any salt on it, of course.
You can then poke a hole in the print so that you can hang it. I’m not quite sure what I want to do with mine yet, so I haven’t. I’ll keep my options open 🙂

After this I placed the paw prints on a baking tray covered with baking paper. I had written the names of the dogs on this beforehand with marker, so that every paw print was on the correct name and they didn’t get mixed up.

Then I baked the paw prints at about 100-120 degrees in the oven, until they were completely dry. This took quite a long time for me, because I had made them quite thick. Check every now and then how your creations look, and turn them over now and then so that the bottom can also dry properly.

Finishing the Salt Dough Paw Print

This is completely optional, if you want to keep the paw print ‘natural’ you can of course! I did enjoy painting mine with metallic acrylic paint, in a color somewhat close to the girls’ fur color. I wrote the names on the back, but if you’re good with a brush you can of course also paint them in a decorative letter on the front.
If you don’t paint them, it’s a good idea to seal them with a clear coat to prevent them from being damaged and/or falling apart.

And they’re done!