Salt dough beaded fairy wands

I've been meaning to make fairy wands for a while. Mia loves dressing up in her princess and fairy costumes, and by calling it a magic wand I was able to interest Harry in the craft too! They are great for imaginative play, and with the streamers they look fab when they are being waved around.

These pretty salt dough wands with their ric rac streamers are perfect for waving and twirling about. They take a few days to make as you need to wait for the different parts to dry, so you need to work on them in stages.

You need:

A length of bamboo garden cane or similar stick
Tape
Ric rac or ribbon
Strong glue or Sugru
Small wooden beads
Glitter/sequins/other decorations

To make the salt dough:

Two measures plain flour
One measure salt
A few drops food colouring
Water to mix to a dough

Each wand is made with a stick of bamboo from the garden, cut to about 30cm and with the ends sanded smooth. I decorated the entire length of each one with coloured ric rac. The easiest way that I found to do this was to secure one end of the ric rac to the end of stick with tape, and then paint a line of fabric glue along the side of stick. Twirl the stick on one end while you feed out the ric rac so that it covers round, then secure at the other end with tape. Leave to dry.

The toppers for the wands are made with salt dough. I used a very basic recipe - two parts of plain flour to one part salt, with a few drops of yellow food colouring and enough water to mix it to a dough. I used a heaped tablespoon as my part measure and it made enough for about eight toppers.

I sorted out some small wooden beads for the children to use to decorate the salt dough. I've seen enough crafts on Pinterest using melted plastic beads to be wary of using plastic beads in the oven! Then we made up the salt dough and cut out shapes, placed them on a baking tray and pressed in the beads. This amount of salt dough made enough for about eight shapes, so the children could choose their favourite when they were dry.

When it came to baking the salt dough, I kept a very close eye on the oven and checked them at ten minute intervals, as I was a bit wary about burning the beads. In the end I baked it at a low heat (100C) for just over an hour, turning the salt dough half way through, and it was absolutely fine. Then I kept the salt dough pieces in the warm airing cupboard for a few days to make sure that they were thoroughly dried out and also placed them on a sunny windowsill. When they were dry I painted them with some silver glitter paint which makes them really shiny and sparkly.

I cut some long lengths of ric rac to make streamers for the wand. The salt dough pieces are quite heavy, and so I chose to use Sugru to attach them to the top of sticks. I reviewed Sugru recently and was very impressed at how well it stuck different materials together. I used one 5g pack of yellow Sugru which was enough to stick both the salt dough and the long pieces of ric rac firmly to the stick. If you don't have any Sugru then you'd need to use some very strong glue, and perhaps tape the pieces of ric rac to the stick first.

When the Sugru or glue has dried, the wands are ready to be played with! Children can invent all sorts of role play games, and these wands should be sturdy enough to last for a good amount of time.

The beads and ric rac that I used for this project were part of a review bundle from The Bead and Button Company.