Getting Ready For the Holiday Sales

Happy Thanksgiving!  By the time this is posted, it will be Turkey Day, so a happy one to all!  I have spent the day prior to the annual Day of Gluttony looking forward to my holiday craft bazaars.  I try to have a variety of items for sale, and last year we did rather well with the paper ornaments that my daughter Meredith and I made.  This year, I harkened back to a project that I did with my son when he was in kindergarten,and being that he is a senior in high school now, that was quite awhile ago!  That year, we decorated clear glass ornaments with different colored acrylic paint by swirling it on the inside.  It was great, and we made several ornaments for relatives and teachers.  My daughter and I thought we would try it again this year, and prepared by waiting for sales at Michael's to purchase the clear ornaments and paint.  To our dismay, it did not work out...the paint was not good enough quality, so left empty bare spots in the ornaments. So disappointing!

So I was left with a bunch of clear glass ornaments, purchased on sale, and needing a concept.  The other day, browsing a bulletin board that I frequent, I stumbled across a post describing ornaments made with glitter and alcohol ink.  Researching it, I found that the alcohol ink is rather involved and more complicated that I want to get into.  However, the basic idea was to use hair spray on the inside of the ornaments to serve as the adhesive for the glitter. I gave it a try, and it worked!

My initial experiments were successful, though I had concerns about the long-term stability of the hair spray.  So instead, I purchased a spray adhesive and used that to adhere the glitter to the inside of the ornaments.  The result looks the same, but I feel better about the quality of the ornaments.

It is a simple matter of spraying the adhesive inside the ornament, then pour 2 different colored extra-fine glitter into it, swirling it around to get even coverage.  The result is a bright, beautiful, deep mix of glittery color.

We have been busy today creating many ornaments, and hopefully the craft bazaar shoppers will like them!  Our first is on December 7, which is the church bazaar, and the following weekend is our Salem Etsy Team sale.  I am looking forward to both!

*Edited to add, here are a few more pictures!