Hello everyone welcome back to the craft room and today’s Flashback Friday Glitter Ornaments 1 post. In keeping with the Christmas in July theme, let’s flashback to November 2012 and an up-cycle craft. I was fascinated when I saw that Pledge Floorcare could be used in place of glue to adhere the glitter to the inside of ornaments. Let me take you on a 2 part adventure to learn how this is done. Part 1, let’s up-cycle some old glass ornaments.
Glitter Ornaments – Part 1
One of the hot DIY topics for Christmas this year are glitter ornaments. Of course the sparkly bling got my attention. An even bigger attention getter is the fact the glitter is on the inside. Well, since it is November, the height on Christmas decorating season, I do not have extra cash to spare to purchase brand new clear ornaments. The better thought would be to refurbish older less attractive glass ball ornaments!
This past weekend our local Goodwill store had about 10 different boxes of glass ornaments in all different shapes and sizes. Because I didn’t know for sure how to remove the color, I only purchased one box of small ornaments. Since there were only 8 of the possible 10 ornaments in the box, it was only 99 cents.
Wait, 8 you say?? I only count 6 in the box. Well, that’s because I didn’t think to take a picture of it until after I had already worked on two of them. LOL Six ended up being the final count anyway as I broke one getting the top off and the other in the cleaning process.
Warning
Because you are using liquid bleach, there is an extremely HIGH chance that you will get some on your clothing. It’s not a matter of IF, it’s a matter of WHEN. So please, wear old clothing that you will not mind if it is ruined. Trust me, I now have little pin point spots of bleach on an old pink T-shirt.
You will also need to be in a well ventilated area. Open a window or door. Turn on a fan. Please, take precautions!
The Cleaning Process
The Internet is a fascinating place, you can find almost any type of information out there with a few simple key strokes. I found two different ways to remove the paint from the inside of these glass balls. There were no comparison pictures of the different techniques, so I wasn’t sure which would work better. So I wanted to try them both to see for myself. Each one called for the use of bleach. The difference, one said to add dry rice, the other suggested the use of salt.
The first combination I tried was bleach and rice. As you can see in the image below, this did not work very well. I shook the ornament for about 5 minutes and this was the result…not pretty!
With that result I really didn’t hold out much hope for the second combination. Bleach and salt, how could that work? BUT I was surprised. After the same 5 minutes of shaking, the following image is what I saw. WOW! What a happy surprise!
Another Glitter Ornaments Surprise
Now there was also another surprise while working with the first ornament. I will be the first to admit I know nothing about how glass ornaments are created. I do know there is some sort of paint on the inside. What I did not know was there is only silver paint on the inside. The color, (in my case, blue, purple and red), is only on the outside, with an almost plastic type coating. As you can see in the image below it peeled off in sheets under warm running water. It was fascinating really.
I let these sit for a few days to dry completely before moving onto the next phase. Stay tune for part 2.
Thank you for joining me for today’s Flashback Friday Glitter Ornaments 1 post. This step was very messy, stinky and ended with a small chemical burn on my finger. Why? Well I was not wearing gloves and I held my finger over the opening of the ornament when I shook it. Not smart! So please, use caution when working with bleach. I was however, very happy with how clean the ornaments were at the end of the process.
Have you ever created glitter Christmas ornaments before? Did you add the glitter to the inside or the outside of them? Let me know in the comment section below. Join me next Friday when we Flashback to part 2 where I share all about the process of adding the glitter to the inside of the ornaments.
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