Sun Medallions

With Summer Solstice coming up in a couple of weeks, now is the perfect time to make sun medallions for a treasure hunt! I first came across this idea well over a decade ago in the book “Wiccacraft for Families” by Margie McArthur. My older kids and I had so much fun making them. Once we painted sun symbols on wooden disks, but then found it was much more fun to use salt dough. I even found sun-print fabric and made little drawstring bags for them to put their sun treasures.

Its been a while, but I’m making some again! I rolled out a batch on my own today, but will probably make more with my teenagers later- they’ll have fun hiding them on Solstice for their little brother!

I used regular strength salt dough for this:

1 cup salt
2 cups flour
¾ cup water
yellow food coloring
gold glitter

First, I mixed together the salt and flour. Then I tinted the water with food coloring and worked it into the flour, kneading in more food coloring to get the color I wanted. Then I kneaded in a bunch of gold glitter. (The medallions we made when my older kids were little were made with just plain salt dough, then painted when they were dry. Doing it this way saves that step.)

I rolled out the dough (not too thin) and cut out medallion shapes with a small biscuit cutter. I used a cookie spatula to move the disks to a pizza box lid.

I used some of the samples of sun symbols from Margie’s book, but also, just dug around in the kitchen for things to use as imprinting tools. I used a gluestick cap to make medium circles, a skewer to make dots, a butter knife to make lines, and a jumbo bendy straw to make some of the sunrays. I also had some sun stamps, but they didn’t leave a very deep impression. (I may have to sponge some darker paint into the depressions when they are dry.)

Now is a great time to make these, because they’ll have plenty of time to dry before the Solstice.

*For more ideas on celebrating the Summer Solstice with kids, see my article Kids Activities for Midsummer.