Winter Wonderlands

Now you have a bunch of clear glass ornaments left over, what to do? There’s a variety of things you can do but one of my favorites is to take transparency film (which is clear) and paint a scene on it. I did this with a Young Women’s group and they really enjoyed it.

You can do lots of things with transparency film, especially if it’s made to go in an ink jet printer. The steps mentioned in this craft are for you to paint a scene but you can print photographs, words and clipart and use those just as easily.

Glass Ornament Scenes:

Materials and Supplies:

~Acrylic paints—you can buy a cheap set of paints and get 20 or so colors or you can buy the small containers that are around 60 cents at the store

~Paint brushes

~Clear Glass Ornaments

~Transparency film for ink jet printers

~Fake snow

~copy paper

~Scissors

~Tweezers

~Pencil or chopstick

~Ribbon

Directions:

1. Find the measurement of your ornaments. Hopefully it’s on the box; otherwise there’ll be a lot of math involved! The thing to remember is if you’re using a 3 inch ornament, you need to trim the circle of transparency just a bit smaller than that. You can use a piece of copy paper to begin with so you don’t waste a lot of transparency film. The tweezers will help you pluck it back out of the ornament.

2. Cut out the circles of transparency. I do several at a time for practice and to have some on hand for several ornaments.

3. Find an image you want to paint that’s small enough to look amazing in the mini-winter wonderland. I used clipart from Word for the Young Women to copy. They just put the images under the transparency and painted away. Whatever you paint, make sure to let the image dry really well before trying to do anything with it. This is where doing lots comes in handy!

4. Once dry, carefully roll the transparency into a tube (like a burrito) making sure the painted part is on the inside. This will protect the paint from getting scraped off by the edge of the glass ornament. Adjust with the tweezers or pencil eraser so that the image is straight.

5. Add fake snow by taking a rolled up piece of paper (like a funnel) and placing it in the mouth of the ornament. You may need to use a pencil to push the snow into the ornament. Make sure you get the snow on both sides of the transparency.

6. Add the cap back on and tie on a pretty ribbon for decoration.

Extra gift idea?

Attempt a great challenge! Do the twelve days of Christmas but with your own special flare or memories. "My true love gave to me..." There are sweet poems on line that you can search out, too.

Like I mentioned, you can do so much with clear glass ornaments. If you aren’t up to the task of painting and you don’t want to purchase the transparencies, find a really pretty ribbon, or maybe two, and fill the ornament. You need to find one that’s not too wide and doesn’t have wires along the edges so you can get it into the ornament. Make sure when you’re feeding the ribbon in, you twist it now and then so that it fills the sphere and doesn’t just lie against the sides. Don’t skimp on ribbon! Really fill the ornament so that it looks nice and full.