UPcycle | DIY Olympic medals

Ideas for fun Olympic games and activities are endless. Gather the adults together to watch the opening ceremony, eat good food and recreate the Olympics right in your backyard.

Photos: 10 Olympics-inspired party ideas

You can’t have Olympic party games, however, without medals. I’m sure most of us (or all of us) aren’t going to be able to forge our own gold medals. But you can easily make some adorable personalized “gold medals” for your guests.

One of my favorite “funday” projects for kids, a simple salt dough, is perfect for creating these party favors. You can break this into two separate craft projects since the curing process takes 4-5 hours.

Aside from decorating your medals, the basic dough only has three ingredients that are kitchen staples – flour, salt and water.

Salt dough is flexible and fun to work with. Make sure to pin this for other projects, since it is great for holiday decorations and those days you may be grasping for a rainy day project.

Basic salt dough

• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup water
• 2 cups all-purpose flour

Blend ingredients in a bowl using a mixer or by hand until your dough comes together.

Roll out your dough with a rolling pin until the dough is about ¼ of an inch thick.

Cut out your “medals” with a 2-inch circle cookie cutter or a canning lid – my personal favorite cutter for cookies and biscuits.

If you are making other decorations, this dough is pretty flexible and can be molded into shapes, and of course, you can choose relevant cutters for whatever your occasion.

Carve out your medal design. For these, I used a nutcracker tool for carving out my design.

Make sure to pierce a small hole at the top for lacing your ribbon through when finished.

Place on a lined baking sheet and bake at 200 degrees F for 4-5 hours.

Cool on a cooling rack and finish decorating.

Salt Dough Olympic Medals:

Red, white and blue ribbons or material
Gold, silver and/or bronze craft paint
Black paint or marker for detail

Paint your medals and let dry before adding your ribbons.

Lace your ribbons through the hole and place on display for when your guests arrive.

Photos: 10 Olympics-inspired party ideas

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Twinkle VanWinkle ponders, creates and discovers cool stuff about music, movies, food, fashion and so forth. Her thoughtful writings and interactives give great advice about healthy food, cooking tips, DIY projects, fashion and more. She’ll teach you a thing or two about music as well. Along with producing dynamic entertainment content for LIN Media, she is a mother, musician and social media fanatic.