So, with this being a low-key Christmas, I wasn’t sure if I was going to do new craft projects – I mean, other than the pastel Christmas village I made way back in January (dorky!) But blame Pinterest, I got the idea for these pretty marble-painted ornaments!

I used the tutorial from the Creativity Exchange as inspiration, and I adapted it to some clear plastic ornaments I already had.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Clear glass or plastic ornaments. I had these two-piece ornaments in the house already, but if you are starting from scratch, this style with the opening at the top will be easier to use and give a more polished finished product
• Craft paints. You’ll need the most of the white color. I used three different colors for each ornament – white, a color, and a metallic paint
• skewer or toothpick to mix the colors
• Ribbon or ornament hanger

Here’s how to do it:

• Squeeze a small amount of paint into your ornament (I put some in each side of the two-piece ornaments) – mostly white, with a bit of a color and a bit of metallic paint
• To create flecks of color, you can splatter some paint (mine happened naturally, when I was at the end of a jar of paint, and it came out in small amounts) and let it dry a couple of minutes before starting to swirl the paint
• Use a wooden skewer or toothpick to swirl the paints gently – don’t overmix, as the colors will continue to marble in the next steps
• For the two-piece ornaments, I closed the ornament and slowly rotated it to let the paint marble. To let the paint slowly fill the open areas, I rested the ornaments on top of my paint bottles, with the open area at the bottom. For the one-piece ornaments, after rotating a few times, you can rest it upside down over a paper cup to let the extra paint drip out
• Once my two-piece ornaments were completely painted, I opened them back up to let the paint try, careful to keep the two matching halves together
• Once your paint is dry, you can reassemble your ornaments and add a hanger!
• I love that this is one of those projects where every result is different, and you can’t go wrong!

Here are some pictures of the finished ornaments. Looking forward to putting together our pastel-and-metallic Christmas decorations soon!

Julie aka “Jewels”