Christmas DIY toddler project

I had a brilliant idea. In fact, so brilliant, I teared up when I explained it to the hubs. The tearing up might be because I'm pregnant and emotional, but I digress... My brilliant idea was... wait for it...
wait for it...

wait for iiiiiiiiiiittt....


DIY Christmas ornaments! Sparkley, glittery, messy, painty, styrofoamy Christmas ornaments to give to the grandparents (those people are so hard to buy for!!) I figured, even if we make a huge mess and they're un-symmetrical and ugly, they'll still be gorgeous and my Maya will have a blast making them. Aaaand... I'm tearing up.

Finished ornaments

Anyway, here's my tutorial on how we achieved such beautiful goodness.


 

The plan: make it sparkle.

Supplies: 

• Four medium styrofoam (smooth) balls 
• Red/blue mixed and silver glitter
• Paintbrush
• Blue, red, yellow paint
• Paper bowl
• Pen
• White ribbon
• Hot glue gun (not pictured)
• Wire (also not pictured...Gah what is wrong with me? Get it together woman.) 

I shoved a pen up the balls to hold them while painting (see little holes in pic), then set them gently on empty tealights so they wouldn't roll around. As you can see by the trail of blue in the very back, they still rolled a bit. Good thing I'm covering the whole sumbich in glitter!!

Once the red and blue are dry, I'm going to use the yellow paint for the handprints, that way I can write her name and the year in sharpie and it'll be easy to read. Or I might have Maya dip her hand in glue and glitter... 

This one's mine. The little one was sleeping, and I just couldn't wait to put glitter on something! So while the paint was wet, I stuck the holder pen back in and poured glitter over the whole thing (over an empty bowl to try and contain the mess).

Drying on their tealight stands. Notice the trail of red leading to a little red continent on the blue one. The glitter and/or ribbon at the end will cover it up.

Keeping busy while waiting for the balls to dry

Handprints in yellow paint. It's harder than it seems to get a toddler's painty handprint on a ball... She wanted to play with the ball, not just touch it in one spot then let go. 

I hot-glued the ribbon across the widest part, framing the handprint.

Adding the hook. 
Loop one end under the ribbon, wrap it around itself, and bend the other end to make a hook!

I traced glue around the edges of the handprints, and then I had Maya roll the glue bits in the glitter. It got a little smooshy in some spots.

Added some snowflake accessories!

Finished products! On the blue ones I wrote Maya's name and the year in glue & glitter , red one I just used sharpie because there wasn't space for it in glitter.  

The one in the very back was just mine, and all I added (since the last pic of it) was a squiggly line with the silver glitter. I also hot-glued the empty tealight to the top (over the pen hole) and poked the wire through there to make the hook. I'm sure there's a neat-er way to do it, because it looked a little messy.

So much fun! I can't wait to get crafty again next time!