Coastal Piano Scape With Dough Ornaments

Coastal Piano Scape With Dough Ornaments

I had most of the elements for my Coastal Piano Scape. It began with a beautiful woven table runner and a “Sun, Sand and Surf” sign from Hobby Lobby. Two Cracker Barrel bathing beauties flanked the Hand painted Hello Summer Sign in the middle. A colorful wooden lettered “Beach” carving sat nicely in the right corner. Ceramic white turtle and fish scent chip holders provided contrast to all the bright colors. But, something was missing. The Coastal Piano Scape was missing that small, detailed item that makes you want to take a closer look.

Coastal-themed dough ornaments were the “little something” I’d been looking for. The kids were at Vacation Bible School, so I had just enough quiet time to make a few. I used a recipe from Allrecipes. However, I added food coloring to my dough before baking, so that I wouldn’t have to paint them later. The way they were dyed, and how the ornaments were left unvarnished/sprayed, gave them that sun bleached beach look I was hoping for. You can see the original recipe here. * The dough/cookies are merely decorative and not edible.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup salt
• I halved the original recipe
• raffia string
• rolling pin
• parchment paper
• small object (pencil or coffee straw) to make a hole for hanging
• coastal cookie cutters
• 1 box of egg dye/food coloring with, Blue, Green, Red, and Yellow

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Directions:

Mix the flour, water, and salt together. Roll into a ball and knead for a few minutes (I did not knead for 10 minutes, as the recipe suggested).

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Divide the dough into 4 equal parts. Push down a little hole in the middle of each dough ball. Follow the directions on the food coloring box for making Sunset Orange, putting the dye into one dough hole. Place Blue and Red together into another dough hole, and Green and Red (separately) into the remaining dough holes. Work the dye into the dough, washing your hands after each color change. You will have the following dough balls when you’re finished: Sunset Orange, Green, Red, and Marbled Blue/Red.

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Place a piece of parchment paper on your work surface, and set the oven temp to 325 degrees. Flour the rolling pin and the parchment paper. Roll the Sunset Orange and Green dough to a width between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch. Use the fish and tree cookie cutters to make ornaments. Roll some small Green dough for the fish eyes. Use a spatula to lift the cookies and place them on your parchment covered cookie sheet. Poke a hole about 1/4” from the top of each ornament, for the raffia string. Follow the same process to make a fish from the Blue/Red Marbled dough.

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You can use any cookie cutter you want to make more ornaments, or you can try making an octopus or starfish. For the octopus, I rolled out a head and 8 tentacles from the Blue/Red Marbled dough. Then, I pinched the legs to the head and smoothed everything out. Next, shape the head, and bring the tentacles to a point. Use a plastic coffee straw to poke holes for the eyes (or whatever you have on hand), then add some round, Sunset Orange eyes.

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Pinch a Red ball into a starfish shape, with 5 legs/tentacles. Keep working those legs until you like them. Poke holes all over the starfish with a coffee straw. Make another starfish with Sunset Orange

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Place everything in the oven and bake it for one hour. My ornaments were done a lot sooner than this, so check them after 30 minutes. I did not spray them with acrylic gloss sealer after baking, because I wanted a sun-washed coastal look. Tie on your raffia string for hanging.

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You’re all done! I saved half of my dough for my 11 year-old. I’m going to add her sea creatures to the piano scape after she makes them.

Happy Summer!

Kristie

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