Even though my archives don't go back as far, I started this blog in March of 2003, and had a collection of craft tutorials housed on the server of the ISP that Chris and I used. We switched ISPs over a a year ago due to service issues, and those service issues affected my ability to move all of my tutorials off of the Telus server. I thought that I'd lost a lot of content, and even worse, lots of photos! Yesterday, I was poking around one of our flash drives, and I found one that I didn't think that I had. Without further ado:
Marblized Christmas Ornaments
I first made these ornaments about five eight years ago when I saw a how-to in a magazine. Since then, I've made a lot of them out of spheres, but I've also made some nice ones out of ovals and stars.
Materials:
- Clear plastic balls that come as two halves that snap together.
- Acrylic paint in several festive colours. I usually use three colours, with one of them being a metallic.
- A functioning hot glue gun (white glue does work, only it's a little more difficult to work with).
- Festive ribbon or trim (enough to wrap once around each ornament you make, and for bows on top if desired).
- Cord for making a loop to hang the ornament from.
With a lint-free cloth, I first clean the two halves of my ornament ball to remove dust and smudges.
My next step is to drizzle a small quanity of the paint in each half, no more than a tablespoon's worth all together. I usually try to drizzle evenly so as to cover as much surface area as possible, and avoid getting paint on the rims where the two halves will connect together.
Then, I snap the halves together, and leave the paint colours to mix together in a swirly pattern. If the plastic ball is large enough, I'll rest it in a teacup and then rotate it around every 10 - 20 minutes to allow the paint to throughly cover the inside of the ball. When I use tiny plastic balls, I've made little rests for rotating by cutting up the cardboard center from a roll of paper towels. Sometimes spinning or shaking the ball produces a neat pattern, too.
Once the ball is thoroughly covered and you like the pattern, separate the two halves again and leave them face-up to dry. This is the stage where the importance of not using more than a tablespoon of paint become apparent - if there's too much paint, all of the excess will pool at the bottom of each half-sphere, and take a really long time to dry! If there are a few spots that weren't covered by paint, it's not really cheating to dab paint on with a tiny brush.
When the halves are dry (I usually leave mine for a couple of days), snap them together. Cut a length of ribbon or trim to match the circumference of the ornament. Apply a bead of hot glue along the length of the seam where the two halves snap together, and then cover with the ribbon to hide the seam.
If desired, cut a length of ribbon to make a jaunty bow at the top of the ornaments (I usually use nine inches). I have recently converted to wired ribbon, as it has proven to be easier to squish through the tiny hole at the top of the ornament, and the resulting bow can be shaped to be as full as a person wants afterward. Tie a loop of cord through the top of the ornament, and hang and enjoy :)
These last few years, I've been having a hard time finding the plastic spheres to make these ornaments. Craft stores that used to carry them seem to have replaced them with clear glass balls. I think that this technique could be modified for the clear glass balls by pouring the paint into the opening at the top of the ornament, and the step where the trim is applied to hide the seam could be omitted.
~ first posted on November 14, 2003 ~
I have three balls of the grey variegated and two balls of the fuzzy yarn, and I might just keep knitting away at my version of the Rockstar scarf until I run out of the red. I'm not really following the pattern - my yarn is different, my gauge is different, the number of stitches I cast on is different, and I'm knitting more rows of each the main colour and the contrast colour. In the end, though, Rockstar is just a striped scarf done in garter stitch.