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I’m doing bathroom makeover on a budget. I painted the walls with paint I got from the bargain bin at Home Depot and hung a framed photograph I already had. The walls needed a bit more but there wasn’t much room left in my budget. I had an idea in mind for some 3D starfish figures and set out to make them myself. I wanted to make them out of some sort of dough with ingredients I already had in the pantry. Salt dough came to mind but when I went looking for a recipe I came across a baking soda dough and decided to try that instead.
Baking Soda Dough
1 Cup Baking Soda
1/2 Cup Cornstarch
3/4 Cup Water
Directions
Combine ingredients in a pot and cook over medium heat stirring continuously until it starts to thicken into a mashed potato consistency.
Remove from heat and carefully transfer dough to parchment paper or a Silpat and cover with a damp cloth until it cools enough to handle.
Since I wanted to make two starfish, I divided the dough equally into two balls.
If you plan on making a starfish too, I’ll save you some time in case you thought to construct your Starfish this way too — DON’T! I thought it would be a good idea to form each leg and then mold them together. It wasn’t! Instead, mold and shape your starfish from a single ball of dough so it won’t have any seams.
It took me a little bit to get the shape I wanted but I think they came together pretty well! I used the sharp end of a bamboo skewer to poke tiny holes into the surface to give them some texture. This dough dries out very quickly so keep any dough you aren’t working with right away covered with a damp cloth. I had to wet my fingers a few times to keep the dough I was working with from drying out too quickly!
Since I wanted to hang these on the wall, I used the eraser end of a pencil to make a hole in the back. I didn’t have it go all the way through so that these could hang “invisibly”.
Once you’ve got your shapes ready you can either leave to to air dry for a few days or bake them at 175 degrees for several hours depending on the thickness of your dough. To be honest, my starfish were too large and thick for this type of recipe which made them pretty fragile. I had to glue some cracks and handle them very carefully! I was worried they wouldn’t last on the wall but so far so good! I painted them orange and hung them up. Here’s the final product:
What do you think? Not bad for no out of pocket expense, right? If these ones break I’ll probably replace them with sand dollar ones since those would be much thinner and more suitable for this type of dough.
That is pretty cool.