Christmas Ball Project

I bought clear Christmas balls, to do a project with my daughter.
And it did not play out exactly as planned. So, I will share that with you all here in “preparing for Christmas” land.

Painted Christmas Balls

Supplies

  • glass balls
  • glitter gel (or not)
  • small marble or metal BB (or not)

I did these with my kid, who is almost 5 years old.
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I pulled the”cap” off the top and then I let her pour glitter glue gel stuff in the balls.
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The way the gel came out of the tubes, to be honest, it looked like little poop piles. And the glitter didn’t sparkle quite enough to distract from the “poop” look of it.
So I went and got a little metal BB/small marble.
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I carefully dropped/rolled that in through the neck, and then I slowly turned the ball over and over, and the piles spread to stripes.
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That was very satisfying. (The gel did not move around on its own.)
I very very gently shook one of the balls to move the BB in the gel glue, and it actually broke the glass and fell out. !! It startled me and, at that point, I was holding this glass ball with a sharp hole in it and tiny  shards covered in glitter were on the floor.
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Aaaak.
I will try to rethink it. Maybe nail polish? That rolls on its own and I don’t have to have a ball to influence it.
But then, these will not be a project that I will claim is hers. I don’t even want her to hold them and have an accident.
Maybe I will research plastic globe ornaments and try it with those. I have been looking for them, but I have not seen them in person yet.

Have you done ornaments with kids? Show us how they went!

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10 years ago by in Christmas , Holiday | You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
12 Comments to Christmas Ball Project
    • DrRuss
    • Susi,
      I will working on this project next week. Maybe if you add some gel medium or white glue to the mix the poop glitter might flow a little bit better. I will be using acrylic paint, mica powders, and loose glitter for my project next week–all of which are not kid friendly. I wonder if you add gel medium and the poop glitter in a dixie cup to mix and then pour it into the ornament if this might help. Just a suggestion.

    • DrRuss
    • Also, for future reference, Michaels and Amazon have clear acrylic ornaments for sale but I don’t think that this would help you right now. My Michaels store is out of them in Manhattan.

    • Kat
    • I was thinking glitter paint, maybe watered down a bit, would flow nicely. I think cheap nail polish might be good too, but had to clean if it spills.

    • Jan
    • I have read that you can use liquid floor wax to coat the inside of the ball and then shake in some glitter. It is on my ‘too try’ list.

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