…special christmas gifts – some hand painted christmas ornaments… :D

…and a sneak peek for you at my very first hand painted christmas ornaments… 😀

I have to admit that this posting was quite an inner struggle for me. Should I keep my special christmas gifts a secret or shall I post a picture of them to inspire other fellow crafters?

Well, it’s quite obvious that the urge to inspire others finally got the upper hand. I am just too proud of the outcome to not share it! *giggle*

Maybe you remember the short note about the glass ornaments which I found at a local crafting store in my recent “…christmas is coming…” posting. When I saw these glass ornaments for the very first time, I had just a basic idea of what I could do with them. And sometimes a basic inspiration like this is all one needs to start a new crafting project…

Well, it took some days until the mood suddenly stroke me and I started playing with the glass ornaments. And after I saw how cute the first hand painted christmas ornaments looked like, I just couldn’t help but get more glass ornaments… It’s so much fun to “fill” them and to decorate them… Yeah, you can say that I am very playful and that I love painting things….

And now let’s take a closer look at my christmas ornaments – enjoy! 😀  

Well, my basic idea behind creating interesting color patterns within the glass ornaments was quite simple – I just put two or three contrasting acrylic paints into the glass ornaments and rotated them. This created some fun patterns within the glass ornaments completely by chance. Btw. this is also a quite fun way to get rid of old acrylic colors and left over acrylic paint from previous projects… 😉

After playing with the very first glass ornaments I discovered that I needed a good amount of paint in order to cover the inside completely within a reasonable time period. But the amount of paint used was also far too much paint to let the ornaments dry with the opening up. And after seeing how much paint is actually wasted when I turn them around and let them dry with the opening down, I made the decision to recycle some of the surplus paint in the future…

But in order to recycle the surplus paint and to let my christmas ornaments dry in a more convenient way, I had to come up with a good idea. And it suddenly hit me – I had one mesh plate from a shelf left and could easily build a drying rack for my next batch of glass ornaments.

And not only that – with a little bit of effort I could put some empty glass ornaments underneath the filled ones and collect a good amount of the surplus paint to use them for the next ones:

This way I was not only able to recycle some of the paint – the mixed paint which dropped into the bottom ornaments had also a lovely build in marble effect which I really liked.

And here a look at some of my drying christmas ornaments:

And a look at my “work station”:

Yeah, I admit it – I love to use our dining table for projects like these… 😉

After some hours of drying, I saw that some of the paints – mostly the silver, gold or glitter paints – didn’t cover the inside completely and “cracked”. Therefore I decided to fill them with some opaque colors which worked quite well previously – the two big glass ornaments at the bottom border (left and middle) and the one black/white/grey glass ornament at the upper right border…

And while the second batch of glass ornaments is still drying on my dining table, i can already show you the first three painted christmas ornaments I finished:

Btw. the top christmas ornament was filled with acrylic gold paint – though the paint looked quite opaque after the first filling, a lot of the paint dripped out during the drying process and left a cute translucent marble effect which is quite interesting…

Last but not least let’s get to the painting on top of the glass ornaments:

Before I started painting the glass ornaments, I put my cotton gloves on which I normally use for calligraphy and cleaned the ornaments carefully with a glass cleaner to remove any skin fats. Then I covered the sections which I intended to paint with some white paint first, let it dry and then worked out the details. (Btw. I used the same acrylic paints to paint the glass ornaments as I used on the inside.)

And after a drying period of about 2 to 3 days – to make sure that the paint was set and dry – I went over the christmas ornaments with two layers of “Satin Finish” spray from Krylon to protect the paint on the surface. …and voila! Finished! 😀

Now I only need to let them dry and air out a little bit more so the finish can set before I wrap them… 🙂 

I hope you enjoyed my little christmas ornaments side project. And it’s a lot of fun to make personalized christmas ornaments for your loved ones… Just sayin’… 😀