Saturday, September 1, 2012

Sparkles + Squiggles = Ornament

If that was the only math one ever needed to learn, how fun would life be?

As I have said before, I am making ornaments for a tree I do not own that involve things that mean a lot to me.  I have some REALLY cute ideas for some upcoming ones, but I have yet to find myself with all the necessary tools.

I have helped my mom decorate cakes now and then for quite a few years, usually nothing too major on a cake, except recently with gum paste flowers.  I did some killer orchids for a wedding cake once that were brilliant, if I do say so myself.

We often end up doing designs on the sides of cake, a squiggly lace being my favorite (sure it has a real name but squiggly fits better with my title).

All you need is an ornament, I used plastic so I wouldn't break it, and some puffy paint.  And glitter.  Always have glitter.

Now I know this is not profound or likely to make you gape at your screen, but it is actually quite special to me I realized once I got it done.  I think it needs some ribbon around the top, which I will eventually track down.

For anyone who has never done anything like this or isn't a big cake doer, it is super simple. 

You are just going for a continuous line, the smaller the pattern and the more random you make it the easier it is to disguise flaws.  Obviously my puffy paint tip doesn't have the fine line that a writing tip might, but that is still sufficient for this.

Originally I was going to put a DC picture on this ornament and do the lace around it and then distress it out and make it look all cool but let me tell you that did not pan out for me.  At all.  So for now, this is how this ornament is going to stay.  If you did not want the rest of it clear you could easily paint over this whole thing once the puffy paint dries and make some very beautiful textured ornaments.  It can be any pattern, any color, you could make orange ones that looked like pumpkins, really anything you wanted.

And glitter the heck out of it, I used polyflake.  You won't be disappointed!

****Update: For two other designs, check out my recent post at http://greenzebra9.blogspot.com/2012/10/puffy-paint-ornaments-round-2.html# Pin It Now!

10 comments:

  1. I posted these on my Some Kind of Wonderful Saturday! I just LOVE this idea! Thank you so much for sharing!

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  2. Thank you! I greatly appreciate the posting and the feedback. Have a great holiday season!

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  3. Do you mind if I use this in a HerCampus article? Thanks! I'll give credit.

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  4. Do you have a picture of a completed one? Not sure when to put the glitter on!!! Does the puffy paint dry clear?

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    1. This one is almost identical to what the final ornament looked like. I put the glitter on right after I got the puffy paint on, then let it all dry together. The puffy paint does not dry clear, but if you wanted a clear thing you might be able to use glue instead. If I find a better picture of when it was dry I will update it. I actually left mine with white sparkly paint and clear because it was GORGEOUS in my opinion. I kind of want a whole tree of them. Polyflake really catches light well if you can find it. Any fine glitter will do.

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  5. Thanks for the quick reply. I have a bunch of clear, silver and gold ornaments. I think I am going to do this and use them as hostess gifts to holiday gatherings I attend!!!

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  6. Do you have suggestions on how to let them dry without getting messed up?

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  7. You could hang them from the hooks onto small baby hangers or regular hangers and then hang from shower rod to dry

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  8. I am confused. Don't you need to heat the Puffy paint to make it puff and dry? Did you show a pic of the finished ornament?

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