Painted Christmas Ornaments

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Every year our church makes personalized Christmas ornaments for all the kids. I usually am the one who comes up with what kind of ornaments we make. I was in Dollar Tree one day and noticed that they had started putting out their Christmas items. There were some clear plastic ornaments that intrigued me with all the possibilities. I bought a bunch of them and then started researching ways to decorate them.

I found a lot of different ways and styles of decorating the ornaments. Most of them included painting the outside of the ornament, but I didn’t like the idea of the paint on the outside. I was afraid it would get rubbed off or scratched.
I tried a lot of different methods and paints and mixtures of different types. It was more difficult than I thought it would be. I used acrylic paint, fingernail polish, Mod Podge, and glitter. Each type reacted differently. I liked the results of the fingernail polish best. I used the fingernail polish at Dollar Tree, it comes in a large variety of colors.

I painted Shaylee’s name on one of the ornaments with glitter paint. I tried a paint pen first and wasn’t crazy about the way it turned out so I went over it with the glitter paint for some sparkle.

Some of the first ornaments blended too much in my opinion, but some people liked them better. It is hard to control the amount that the paints or polishes mix because it takes so long for them to dry. I learned that letting as much of the excess paint drain out as quickly as possible helped them retain their original colors better.

I used Mod Podge thinned down just a little to make the glitter ornaments. It was hard to get it the right consistency though. If it was too thick, it didn’t spread all over inside the ornament. If I got it too thin, the glitter moved around and clumped up which made it hard to get good coverage. They still turned out really pretty.

I figured out that it was easier to control the paints if I put the glitter fingernail polish in and allowed it to dry completely before adding any paint.

I left some clear areas on some of the Christmas ornaments for a different look.

The white polish tends to turn pink when swirled with the red. It didn’t turn pink at first, but as the ornaments dried the white turned pink.

All in all, I had fun making the Christmas ornaments. It was exciting because I never knew how they were going to turn out. I had some ornaments that were started exactly the same turn out completely different. None of them turned out alike. I learned to start early in the day since it takes so long for the paint or polish to drain out and dry enough to stop blending. I spent a lot of time turning the ornaments to swirl the colors around inside the ornaments. It was not a quick process, it took several days for some of the ornaments to dry completely, but I was pleased with the way most of them turned out.

Since most of my supplies were bought at Dollar Tree, it was not expensive to make the Christmas ornaments. If you decide to make some yourself, allow enough time for them to dry completely before you need to put the top back on and wrap them. I waited at least a week after I painted them to make sure that they were completely dry.

You might also enjoy some of my other craft ideas like Deco Mesh Wreath and Valentine Bookmarks.

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