Homemade Christmas Ornaments

I was inspired by seeing all the Christmas craft supplies at Factory Direct Crafts to come up with something simple and fun to do with my kids with the clear glass Christmas ball ornaments.

Surely this is something that my kids could help me do that we could give as gifts and decorate our own tree.

I wanted to figure out a way to create pattern within the clear glass ball.

Kinda like building a ship in a bottle only the easy, kid version.

We ended up using the glass version because my boys are a bit older, but there are acrylic clear balls available that can be even easier when making Christmas ornaments with small kids.

We had done a marble painting project awhile back and I thought that might work inside the ornament.  If I could plop some paint in the bottom and then gently drop a small marble inside, I could create lines with the paint by manipulating the marble.

I found some of the kids' magnetic spheres that fit well into the top of the ornament.  Because of the weight of these, it is really important to roll them into place gently and then use a swirling motion instead of a shaking motion.

Homemade ornaments for kids

Here's what you need to make Homemade ornaments for kids:

• dozen or more clear Christmas ornament balls
• small marble or ball bearing
• paint
• floor wax and fine glitter {if desired}
• curling ribbon

We found that you could do multi-colors if you waited between layers.  We also found that you could mix the paint and glitter if patience was involved.  I used floor wax {which dries clear} with the glitter to adhere it to the inside of the clear ball if I wanted the glitter to be on the outside layer.

Here are some of our favorites…

This one is simply white paint in the bottom and then swirled with the marble.  I tried to graduate the swirling so that the white was denser at the bottom and thinned at the top of the ornament.  It reminded me of clouds.

This is the same ornament on a tree tied with red curling ribbon.  The glass has a pretty iridescence that catches the light.

This one used red paint first in the same swirling motion and then a secondary layer of green glitter.  In this case, we simply shook the glitter into the ball while the paint was still wet.  My 8 year old made this one.

This was my 5 year old's creation.  He used the floor wax first and then added both red and green glitter.  Once that dried he stuffed in some of the red and green curling ribbon.  It is hard to fully appreciate how pretty this looks in a photograph.  It is my favorite from the day.

This one started with white paint and then added wax and clear glitter.

My kids LOVED this project.  I would advise that an adult take off the ornament tops and make sure there aren't sharp surfaces there.  We did end up breaking a ball, but the mess was easily contained.  It reminded us of coloring Easter eggs which is always a favorite family activity.

The final homemade Christmas ornaments are beautiful!  We could add personalized tags and they would make a great gift that the child created himself.

Thanks so much to Factory Direct Craft who not only was the inspiration for this post, but its sponsor.

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