{Christmas} DIY Ornaments

Hey friends! I hope you had a fun and festive weekend! We had a craft-palooza, with glitter and paint flying everywhere! Since we're mixing up our Christmas colors this year with jewel tones, I wanted a fun and inexpensive way to add to our ornament collection. As usual, I got a little carried away and made about eight different varieties....

I picked up a few boxes of clear ornaments for 50% off, and raided our craft supply for paint, glue, glitter and stickers. It was a big free-for-all, and the kids and I had the best time creating together. It was near impossible really hard for me, but I let them decorate their ornaments completely on their own.

I will, however, only show you the best ones mine. Starting with the Midcentury Modern Faux Aluminum...which are really hard to photograph, but if you look at the top photo in the post, you can see just how shiny and reflective they are.

Using onion-shaped ornaments, tape off the tops and spray with a few light coats of Silver Chrome paint. Wait until fully dry to remove the tape.

What's better than stripes? Well, Sparkly Stripes!!

Apply clear double-stick tape in any pattern you like.

 

Roll the ornament in glitter until fully-coated. I prefer Martha's glitter because it's super fine (not Ryan Gosling fine), and has lots of sparkle. Once the tape is covered, use a dry brush to dust off the excess glitter.

These Colorful Balls were made using the same method as last year's Tie Dye ornaments, except these contain a single color each. I wanted them to look like Pantone chips, so I was careful to keep the paint on just the bottom.

Squeeze a small amount of craft paint inside the ornament, and roll it around until it covers the area you want. The paint moves reeeeealllly slowly, so I laid them on their sides in small bowls, and turned them every few minutes. Talk about a cheap way to get custom colors for your decorations!

We couldn't stray from glitter for too long, so next comes Glitter Snowflakes.

Just draw your shape with glue and cover with glitter. If you want to include multiple colors, do both steps for your first color, before moving to the next one.

If you don't want to get messy, the easiest method is using ribbon or washi tape to create patterns. 

Stickers are another easy, mess-free way to embellish plain ornaments. Gemstones and pearls were my favorites.

And finally, my favorite ornaments in the bunch....gold polka dots! I used a gold leaf marker to draw random (obviously imperfect) dots. They look very Kate Spade to me, and are cute as can be on our tree!

Speaking of the tree....that's tomorrow with the Christmas Cheer Party at Megan's! Did you do any decorating this weekend? Are you able to hold back and let your kids create with no input from you?!?