DIY Glitter-Filled Ornaments

We are finally going to have our own real Christmas Tree this year! Last year, I moved into our first apartment a mere 10 days before Christmas, so we were pretty hard pressed to find the time to buy a tree and decorate it with ornaments. Not to mention I was working crazy hours at the bakery and had no time/energy for much else.

I used to have a fake tree that my parents got me my first year of university, but I’ve since given that to my mom for her classroom, along with all of the purple ornaments that I hung on it. Side note - so glad I’ve moved past my purple phase.

So, this year we are going to get a real tree, but a mini version, so it’s only going to be about 3 feet tall or so. Totally appropriate for the size of our apartment, though. It’s also going to have a theme - which I’m really excited about because I’ve never had a themed tree before.

Growing up we had a tree with coloured lights and a huge mish-mash of ornaments in any, and every, colour imaginable. The tree is still like that today, and I wouldn’t change it for the world (my mom tried to convince me to have only white lights for the family tree and I vehemently refused), but for mine and Nick’s tree, I’m going to start a new tradition and go in a different direction. We will, in fact, have only white lights on our tree, and the ornaments will not be all the colours of the rainbow, but will be kept simple in tones of gold, silver and white.

I have wanted to make these glass & glitter ornaments since last Christmas, but had a really hard time finding mini glass ornaments. I ended up deciding that I didn’t need ones that were 1″ in diameter, so I went with ones that were nearly 2″. I figured that this way, I would be able to use them on a full size tree eventually and they wouldn’t look super small.

So, without further ado, here’s a quick tutorial on the gold glitter filled ornaments that I made for our tree.

Supplies:

clear glass (or plastic) ornaments with a removable top (mine were 70mm in diameter)
coarse gold glitter
gold spray paint (if you have OCD like me and want the tops of the ornaments to be gold as well, and not the silver that they came as)

I started by taking off all the tops of my ornaments and spray painting them gold. After they dried, I set them aside to be re-affixed later.

It’s easiest if you leave the ornaments in the plastic packaging and just tilt them so that the opening is facing up like so:
Then, all you have to do is use a piece of paper as a funnel (or a real funnel if you actually have one) and gently pour the glitter into your bulb. I just put a little but into each bulb at first to try and keep the glitter amount even, and then went back and topped up each bulb until all the glitter had been used.
Give it a little shake so that the glitter sticks to the sides a bit and then put the top back on your ornament. Repeat for however many ornaments you have and that’s it!

They came out looking really cute and festive! I love that I was finally able to make them, and that they were custom and fit perfectly with the theme of our tree! Feel free to use any colour glitter that you want to make these ornaments to go with your themed, or multi coloured tree 🙂

Does your Christmas tree have a theme?