Decorating Our Own Ornaments

I bought the ornaments several months ago.  I thought they were plastic.  Today, I learned that they were in fact glass.  Whoops!  The plan was to have my children each decorate one of these ornaments any way they wanted.  Child #1 really couldn't be bothered.  Child #2 was sick and sprawled out on my bed.  Child #3 helped for about five seconds before she moved on to something else.  That's okay.  I was not in a mood to force my children to join in the festive activity.  They can decorate their ornaments another time.  

I went to the basement to gather my supplies.

I figured I would use a variety of elements in my ornaments.  It was really quite a lot of fun.

The first was the one my daughter helped with.  Her favorite color is purple.

I poured in some paint...

...and swirled it around a bit.

That didn't work so well.  I was a bit confused cause it seems to work on all the blogs I read.  I'm pretty sure I skipped a step.  SO, I added water and swirled.  Instead of a swirl effect, I got a watered down coating.

For my next ornament, I pulled out the leftover candy from our gingerbread house.

Most of the pieces were too large to fit in the hole, put I found that the candied stars fit perfectly.

I would like to point out that this is the ornament I dropped and that shattered all over the carpet which resulted in my having to vacuum during the Survivor Finale.  

I used these berries for my next ornament that had fallen off a garland that I rescued from my neighbors trash. 

 Truly, my son saw it sticking out of their trash can on Thursday but I waited patiently till it was pulled to the curb and was public domain before I pulled it out.  It was beautiful.  I even plugged it in and all the lights worked.  CRAZY!! 

 And in case my neighbor is reading this, I also pulled a couple boxes and put those in my van for recycling.  I know, I'm crazy obsessive but I'm not scary, I promise.

Isn't it pretty?

I used an old book that I had picked up from a yard sale for my next ornament.  I love vintage books!  

I literally tore the cover off and shredded two of the pages with scissors.  

I used candied sprinkles for my final ornament.  It's so fun!

Then I pulled from my ribbon stash and tied the ornament to our chandelier.  I first got the idea to try this from Sugar Bee Crafts.  Click "here" to see Mandy's original post.

I hope you will excuse the pictures.  I didn't complete this project till well after dark but I knew I wanted to to post this first thing Monday morning.  Lighting was an issue so I played around a bit.

I obviously need to figure out the setting on my camera.

Seriously, the pictures are horrible.  It really does look so pretty in real life.

It really does add a lot to this space in my dining room.  I absolutely LOVE the results.  FYI, I made sure to layer the ornaments as I hung them.  After breaking one, I completely envisioned the ornaments knocking against each other and shattering across the dining room table.  There are so many things you can do with these ornaments. I can't wait to pick up more at the after Christmas sales!  And for the ornaments I didn't use, I will put in other spots of my home.