Thursday, December 22, 2011

Tutorial: Glitter Ornaments

Every year after Christmas, I pick up a few boxes of empty glass ornaments at Michael's for the following year's holiday season's DIY craft project.  Here's a tutorial on how to make these glass glitter ornaments. 

1.  Gather supplies needed: empty glass ornaments, glitter (in this case, I used Doodlebug glitter), and embossing fluid refill.

2.  Pour 2 teaspoon of embossing fluid into the empty ornament. This was a little hard to photograph, but you can sort of see just how much I have poured into the little bulb.  You can actually dilute the embossing fluid with water to make it stretch.  I recommend diluting it first before pouring into the little glass bulb.
3.  Gently rotate the ornament so that the entire interior of the ornament is coated with embossing fluid. This could take a while if the embossing fluid is thick.  (Yes, some embossing fluid is thicker than others.)

4.  Add more embossing fluid if it is needed. Pour out the extra when it is completely coated.

5.  Pour in the glitter quickly and abundantly and gently but quickly swirl the ornament so the glitter coats the interior of the ornament.  It's important that a lot of glitter hits the wall of the glass ornament at once.  Otherwise, a little glitter hits the wall and the wall loses its stickiness, which means more glitter won't stick.  So to create the most consistent thickness of glitter around the glass wall, use a lot of glitter and work fast.

6.  Pour out any excess glitter.  At this point, the ornament is actually ready to go on your Christmas tree!There's no waiting for drying, it's immediately done.  You can tie some twine on it, put a ribbon on it and hang it up.

7.  Optionally, you can decorate the outside of the ornament if desired with glittered stickers and jewels like I have done here.

Other ideas on decorating the exterior of the ornament: white rubons, permanent markers, glitter pens... I have tied wide ribbons at the top of the ornament, they look really good that way.

I hope this is a helpful tutorial and that you will enjoy making your own glitter ornaments!

3 comments:

pickmepam said...

so cute! i always wondered how to make these, so thank you!

Trish said...

Cute!! I learned something new on this one!

Marge said...

LOVE the sparkle!! And Doodlebug makes the funnest colors of glitter! :)