Primitive Christmas "Cookies"

 I've seen some really cute faux gingerbread men cookies on Pinterest this year, so I thought I'd try my own.  I used salt dough to make these three different cookie shapes.  Poor David...I'm not sure he shares my affection for fake cookies!  Especially when the house smells like real cookies.

 I made a bunch of stars and gingerbread men, and a few candy canes, but I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them.  I tried putting them in Mason jars but only the candy canes would fit through the opening.

Then I remembered some neat jars that I'd seen at the new At Home store.  The lid was a very shiny silver when I bought it, but a little black chalk paint followed by a light layer of brown and tan paint helped it look not so new.

Many craft projects look better in my head than when they're actually done, but this is one that turned out even better than I'd hoped!  And rolling out the dough every afternoon was a lot like playing with Play-Doh.  Not bad therapy after a day of work!

I started with the same basic salt dough for each shape:
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
1 cup water

For the stars, I added about a quarter cup cinnamon to the salt/flour before adding the water.  For the gingerbread men, I didn't add any cinnamon to the dough, but rubbed cinnamon, cloves, and or nutmeg onto them after they were cut out, before baking.  For the candy canes, I added cinnamon after the dough was mixed, so they have a few veins of cinnamon running through, but it's not mixed thoroughly.  The gingerbread men have clove eyes, and the red stripes for the candy canes were added with a barn red craft paint once they were dry.

After baking for an hour at 200, I left them to dry on racks for a few days before putting them in the jar.

Don't feel too bad for David...I did finally make a batch of real cookies for him last night.

I'm posting this on Anderson + Grant's Your Time to Shine link party.  Click over to see lots of great projects!