#TBCCrafters Craft Hop - Clear Ornament Decorating Ideas

Check it Out!  It's our first Christmas after the fire in our new home and having lost the majority of my Christmas decorations I realized we are gonna need more ornaments for the tree. Having seen many ideas on Pinterest for decorating clear glass ornaments, I snagged a deal on a set of 12 at Michael's and Tori and I got busy making our own ornaments using supplies we had on hand.  My supplies are limited so we mainly used Mod Podge, paints and glitter.  Oh and Epsom Salt, it looks just like snow.

The first ornament I made was this little tree in the snow ornament.  I just love the image of green trees in white snow!  I used the Epsom Salt, green flake glitter and a mini wire tree along with a dab of glue to create it. I mixed a little glitter in with the Epsom salt and love the effect.  It kinda looks like little blades of grass popping out of the snow!

Using long handle tweezers I stuck the tree inside the ornament and glued it to the bottom.  Then I simply added my salt/glitter mixture to fill up the bottom of the ornament. I don't have a funnel so I just used a rolled up piece of paper and created a temp funnel, I like using paper funnels because you can make the tip any size you want.  

Then we made what we call Snowball Ornaments!  Using recycled fruit cups as our bowl, they are the perfect size for these clear ball ornaments, we covered the outsides of the ornaments with mod-podge.  Just roll the ornament around in the cup, you can cover the whole ornament or not.  We did it both ways.  Then dip your ball into the salt, you can roll it carefully or sprinkle it on.  I really love this effect and they are so beautiful on the tree!  You could add glitter to your salt too for an added effect! 

Next up we experimented with paints.  We used red and white paints and were going for a candy cane effect, but we weren't able to get exactly what we wanted.  However we discovered that you can make a marbled look when you add paint to the ornament, dripping it over the opening edge and letting it drip down inside and then placing a thumb over the top, and shak it!  We did this a few times and always ended up with pink ornaments, which is fine, we love pink! Next time we are gonna mix it up with greens and yellows! 

Above are some other ornaments we made.  The purple one was done with fabric paint spray, sprayed inside and ribbon.  The pink one is just red/white paint and mod podge.  The one with the red bow is glitter and mod podge and the last one is a paint shaken ornament with fabric paint to write the name.

Tori and I are really loving these clear ornaments and the unlimited number of ways you can use them! We are not done either ;)