There are so many ways to make a simple glass bulb ornament look lovely, aren’t there? Just adding some sand and sea glass or a white feather and some glitter… or, using etching cream to add a simple initial – all great options. I have tried all these…and many more! Today, I want to share my two very favorite (and really easy) ways to embellish a clear glass ornament.
The first way is to use a paint marker, white acrylic paint, and a little sparkle to create…what I call…a ‘pussywillow’ pattern. “Stems” are created with a silver metallic paint marker. Next, the white ‘pussywillows’ are added. Do they remind you of anything? Maybe the top of a cotton swab? That is precisely what I used to paint them! I put some white acrylic paint on a cotton swab to add the ‘pussywillows’ onto the stems. After the paint dried, I used some silver glitter dimensional paint to add a little sparkle to the bottom of each ‘pussywillow’ bud.
Lovely, aren’t they?
The second way I like to decorate a glass ornament is to put strips of book pages into the bulb. It seems everyone is adding book pages or sheet music to ornaments bulbs now…I think the best thing about this is that you can add so much significance to an ornament by your choice of book or song. How cool is it to put the sheet music for the wedding song of a newly married couple into a first Christmas ornament gift to them? The significance of the writing or music is what makes the ornament really special.
The ornament here is one I made last year for one of my book groups…and, I put pages from the books we had read throughout the year. If you know in advance that you will be creating a book group ornament, you can copy a page of your book selection each month throughout the year for that purpose. If not, there are a couple of ways you can get copies of the pages. One way is to make a trip to your local library. If you want to make pages without leaving your home, this can be done pretty easily by looking up the books on Amazon. Most of the books sold on Amazon have the option of looking at the inside pages. Once you have a page on your computer screen, you can print the screen to use for the ornament.
For my ornament, I printed the pages on an off-white paper and put a little sparkle on them before I cut them into strips. I used a few strips from each of our book selections during the year. I then used silver glitter dimensional paint right out of the tube to add the year onto a piece of white felt I had cut into a leaf shape. After the glitter dried, I used a glue gun to attach the leaf and added a ribbon to complete the look.
I hope you enjoyed these diy glass ornaments and they helped spark some creative inspiration for someone on your holiday gift list!
I will be sharing at Blissful Whites Wednesday.
Thanks so much for visiting, Jackie