Easy Home Made Zombie Ornaments

Salt dough takes a turn for the darkly delightful with these easy home made zombie ornaments. Simple to make with common kitchen staples, salt dough has long been a household go-to for Christmas crafts. This year, on a limited budget in a household that Really Digs Halloween, we've turned to salt dough for our Halloween décor, too!

Run, run, Mr. Gingerbread Man

I'm frugal by nature and not possessed of an intuitive understanding of the visual arts (okay, I'm a cheapskate with artistic abilities that end at stick figures and m-shaped birds). Salt dough rings all the right bells with me: cheap, easy to work with, and amenable to shaping by cookie-cutter or template.

If you pack your zombie ornaments away after Halloween (it sounds weird, I know, but I hear there are people who aren't into year-round zombie décor), wrap them in tissue paper and put them in an airtight container with some rice to absorb moisture. Salt dough doesn't take kindly to moisture. Before learning the rice trick, I opened more than one neatly sealed container of salt dough ornaments to find a limp, damp ornament apocalypse inside.

All photographs taken by the author.

You Probably Already Have Everything You Need!

Basic salt dough is one of the easiest crafting materials you can make at home. It costs pennies, and is ready to work with immediately. For enough salt dough to make about 25 thin zombie ornaments or 15 thicker ornaments, you will need:

• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup room temperature water

Mix the salt and flour in a medium-sized bowl, then add the water. Stir until the mixture becomes lumpy and difficult to work with a spoon, and then get your hands in there and mix it with your fingers until you can easily form a ball of dough. If the mixture is too sticky to work with, add a little flour. Don't add more flour than you absolutely need, though, or the salt dough will be prone to cracking as it dries.

When you have a nice ball of dough, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead the heck out of it for at least five minutes. Five minutes of kneading is hard to gauge subjectively, so it's a good idea to glance at a clock if you're making salt dough for the first time.

Keep kneading until the dough is very smooth and somewhat elastic. If you've made pasta dough, that's about what you want this to feel like. If your arms or hands get tired, which they probably will, just pick the dough up and squish and fold between your hands for a while.

Salt dough is ready when your fingers are too cramped for further kneading.

Wash your grody hands, and pull off about a quarter of the dough, a nice fist-sized lump, to work with, Stick the rest in the fridge in a tightly covered container.

Missing Pieces are OK!

I suppose it's possible that one or two folks with otherwise well-stocked kitchens may not have a zombie cookie cutter. If that's you, you'll find both some to buy and some ideas for making do without one at the bottom of this page, under Stuff You'll Need.

Let your dough chill for 15 to 30 minutes in the fridge before you roll it out. Pull off a fist sized piece of dough to work with, and return the remaining dough to its covered container in the refrigerator.

For these hanging ornaments, I wanted the dough to curl and ripple slightly as it dried, so I rolled my dough quite thin, about 1/8-inch (3mm) on a lightly floured surface with a floured rolling pin (ok, with a floured vodka bottle). For thicker, flatter zombie decorations, roll your dough thicker and sandwich it between two sheets of wax paper rather than using extra flour. Be aware that thicker ornaments will take longer to dry.

Cut out your zombies... be sloppy!

Overlapping edges are fine

Dry your zombie ornaments in a 150 to 200 degree oven for about two hours. It doesn't matter if they brown, as we'll be painting both sides. The higher the temperature, the more bubbling and curling you'll see in the dough. I used a 160 degree oven for 2 hours (ok, 3 hours on the batch I forgot about).

Drying zombie ornaments.

And Maybe Throw Some Glitter on Them. Or Not. Your Call.

Your dried salt dough zombie ornaments are now ready to be painted! Simple, inexpensive acrylic paints do a great job on salt dough. I painted these zombie ornaments black with glittery red "blood" at the holes in their heads and the edges of any missing pieces. By all means, though, modify the colors and techniques you use to paint your zombies to suit your own tastes and the rest of your decor.

Gather your paints and brushes.

Ready for painting!

The black base coat goes on first.

When wet or thinly applied, this red glitter paint looked alarmingly pink. With multiple layers, though, it turned a nice, fresh-blood red and pooled in a fabulously blood-like way at the edges of my zombies' wounds.

A few coats of paint for a gross wound.

For Shine and Durability

This step is optional, but highly recommended. Salt dough is cheap and easy to work with, but durable it is not. A good coat of transparent sealer will help protect your zombie ornaments from moisture and scratches. If you don't want a glossy finish, just choose a matte sealer.

I used a glossy sealer.

I got my zombie cookie cutter on eBay, where it no longer appears to be available. There's a cool "Undead Fred" set on Amazon, though, with three zombie cookie cutters in appropriately awkward poses.

If you're only going to make a few ornaments, and you're not really keen on buying a zombie cookie cutter (even if it is totally awesome), you can always use a cookie template instead. Just draw a zombie or download and print some free zombie clip art, cut it out, and use your zombie cut-out as a template when cutting your ornaments.

Templates are definitely tiresome if you're making more than a couple of ornaments, but they do eliminate the need for a cookie cutter if you're pinching pennies or preparing these in too much of a hurry to order anything. Like, you know, if it's a zombie ornament emergency.

For decorating, any acrylic paints you already have should work just fine! I like the red Glamour Dust by DecoArt, as it gives a nice, sparkly finish without the need to apply glitter separately. If you're really into flinging glitter about, though, a layer of red acrylic paint sprinkled with glitter while still wet will produce pretty much the same effect.

Have you created an awesome zombie from salt dough or another medium? I want to hear about it! Share your zombie crafting story here, and help spread zombie awareness while there's still time.