Be inspired to make art at home this winter

Winter’s shorter days and longer nights offers the perfect opportunity for making. Traditionally people would have spent their evenings making things such as knitting clothing, Christmas decorations and carving and whittling. Whilst not many of us knit or whittle, winter is a great opportunity to create things to decorate our homes.

Things you need for creating winter art

Most of our activities use things that you will have at home already like string, cellotaph and scissors. These activities also use materials that have been found, e.g. Twigs, pine cones and paper.

Jenny’s salt dough recipe
Set aside an afternoon for this fun activity! It will take you 10 minutes to make the recipe, prep your baking tray and line it with baking paper. Allow some time to make your salt dough shapes and set aside three hours for cooking the dough. You may also want to paint your creations.

Salt dough ingredients: 

2 capfuls of plain flour (about 500g)

a cupful of table salt (about 250g)

a cupful of water (about 250ml)

Making your salt dough: 

1. Line a baking tray with baking paper. Preheat the oven using your lowest setting.
2. Combine the flour and salt. Add water slowly, stirring as you go and until the dough is formed.
3. Flour a surface like a worktop or table. Put the dough on the floured surface and shape.
4. Put your creations on the lined baking sheet and bake for 3 hrs or until solid.

6 winter art activities

1. Make winter wreaths with found materials. 
2. Make Christmas decorations with salt dough– recipe above. Create paper snow flakes by folding a piece of paper and cutting chunks out of it. Traditionally done using white paper, but these can be made with any paper you have at home including old newspapers and magazines.
3. Make paper chains– using any paper that you have laying around.
4. Dry pine cones– preheat your oven to 200degrees. Line a baking tray with foil and bake for 30mins. Warning- do not leave your oven unsupervised during this time.
5. Make pomander balls by sticking cloves in any citrus fruit such as an orange. To preserve for longer, cover your studded fruit with cinnamon.
6. Make twig ornaments– using twine and twigs make Christmas trees, people and snowflakes using twigs.

Please share pictures of your winter creations with us. You can email images to us at info@slt.org.uk or tag us in your social media. You can also write to us with your reflections of winter.