Ideas for Glass or plastic Christmas ornament with removable top

There are so many items you can put into an empty clear ornament here are some ideas.  This year I found some flat looking clear ornaments. (See picture below.)

In the past, I put pom-poms of different colors.  I printed out on transparent paper pooh bear characters, and then embellished them with pain and transparent sealer.  I got some stickers with baby feet and baby bottles and put my cousin’s new baby (picture) inside and them put the stickers on the outside and use sealant and glitter snow paint for Christmas gift. One year I took tinsel with star and wreaths on them and put them in the ornaments. You also can see some ideas on my ioffer site at www.sanditipple.ioffer.com that I am selling.

On one of the crafting site or newsletters I got this year, I saw that they filled the ornament with beads.

Let your imagination go wild.

Fast Fir Tree Ornament

Materials:  Glass or plastic Christmas ornament with removable top, Martha Stewart Adhesive Stencil, Holiday Icons, Paint brushes, Paint in the following colors:  Green satin finish, Green glitter, Metallic silver, Red Clear with white or clear glitter (like 'sugar cube' from the martha stewart line), Epsom salt, Funnel, and   E-6000 Craft Adhesive

Directions:

Cleaned the ornament so there was no grime that would keep the stencil or paint from sticking.  Take the tree line stencil of the sheet and stuck it on the back of the ornament. The baseline of the trees was about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. The self-adhesive qualities of these stencils are great. They stuck to the curved surface really nicely and kept the paint from seeping under.

Paint the trees with a green satin paint and then painted over it with the green glitter paint while it was still wet. Then peel up the stencil and moved it over to do a second set of trees.

After peel off the stencil, use the paint brush to fill in the gaps between the groups of trees, so it was one continuous forestry line.

Directions:

Cleaned the ornament so there was no grime that would keep the stencil or paint from sticking.  Take the tree line stencil of the sheet and stuck it on the back of the ornament. The baseline of the trees was about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. The self-adhesive qualities of these stencils are great. They stuck to the curved surface really nicely and kept the paint from seeping under.

Paint the trees with a green satin paint and then painted over it with the green glitter paint while it was still wet. Then peel up the stencil and moved it over to do a second set of trees.

After peel off the stencil, use the paint brush to fill in the gaps between the groups of trees, so it was one continuous forestry line

Paint the Front

Wait for the back to dry. Carefully held the ornament at the top and bottom so I would not smudge the paint on the back (that tissue you see is actually on the floor...it's not touching the ornament).

Take the large tree and the "Merry Christmas" stencils from the same pack and placed them on the front. The tree lines you see in the picture above are trees that are actually painted on the other side of the ornament

Use the same satin green and glitter paint from the previous step. Painting on glass requires a little extra paint than on fabric so make sure to use visible brush strokes to advantage by kind of feathering them out in layers to make it look like layers of branches on the tree.

Peel away the tree stencil and painted the Merry Christmas with metallic silver. Once I removed the stencil, I filled in some of the gaps with a fine paint brush.

Once that stencil had been peeled off, paint a really thin coat of glitter paint to simulate snow (it's the "Sugar Cube" paint from Martha's glitter paint line) on the shoulders and across the back of the ornament. And by thin, dip into the paint, wiped it off on a paper towel and blotted any glitter that remained onto the ornament. So kind of like dry brushing.  But do it with glitter paint.

Let it Snow!

Be really carefully removed the top and used a funnel to fill the ornament with Epsom salt up to the level of the tree line along the back.

Finishing Touches

Once the salt was in, the front looked a little bit too plain, so add the date free hand using a thin detail brush and red pearl paint.

And while it probably would have been fine, fill the ornament to 1/3 full of salt.  Glue to the cap down.

Share your ideas on this or anything here on the blog either here or e-mail me at stipple@verizon.net.  I look forward to hearing from you!