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This craft is brought to us by fellow crafter and member of our online crafts group Julia. She has come up with an inexpensive yet beautiful way to welcome this special holiday season using readily available clear Christmas bulbs from your local craft store. Thanks Julia!

There has been such a tremendous response to this craft and we also have some more ideas added to the craft such as how they can be used as centerpiece for weddings, even more ideas on how to make other homemade ornaments and even how you can make the whole tree out out of a tomato cage!!

What you need:

• Buy some of those clear Christmas bulbs
  (that come in about eight packs.).

What you do:

1. Take the tops off of all of them, but keep the packs they come in.
2. Fill bulbs with acrylic paints (such as apple barrel paints) about a teaspoon of each color should do, but you just have to play around with it and see what works. We used about three colors for each bulb. We stuck with golds, silvers, dark blues, forest green, and burgundies.
   
   Tip: Some people like to clean them first to help the paint stick better, although this is not absolutely necessary.
3. Once you have the paint in it, put your finger over the hole and begin to shake back and forth until the paint is swirled all over the interior of the bulb.
4. Then place upside down in the original package for about two days to let all of the extra paint run out.
5. We tied beautiful bows at the top and hung them on the tree. We also gave many as small gifts to bring in the holiday season. They are beautiful! As long as you stay away from really harsh, bright colors, and stick with deep, rich tones, you will end up with a beautiful Victorian looking ornament!
   
   Hope you have fun

Comments:

Can be used as a wedding favor or centerpiece
From: Patt
We made these ornaments (Julia's handcrafted Christmas ornaments) last year for our daughter's December wedding. Then we filled glass fruit bowls with them and used them for centerpieces. Then we gave each family at the wedding an ornament to take home as a keepsake. The ornaments looked lovely in the bowls and our whole family enjoyed making them.

Clean the bulbs with vinegar
From mcarlson
It is not absolutely necessary to pre-treat the glass ornaments, but you will get better results if you rinse them with a diluted vinegar solution, and let them dry overnight before applying the paint. Hope this helps,
From: Deborah
You can clean them with water and vinegar.  We made them last Christmas without washing them out and they were just fine.  Only one or two out of 40 or so didn't work out.  However, there were quite a few people who said their
paint didn't stick. Good luck, Deborah

Using Clear Glass Ornaments
From: Deborah kühnen
A big thank you!!!! These ornaments turned out beautifully! I used the clear glass Christmas ornaments you can buy in craft stores and my son made 6 and so did I. He's only 7 and his turned out at least as well as mine. I don't think you could go wrong with this craft!
Thanks again, Deborah

My favorite homemade ornaments
From: Susan

• Easy and nice keepsake ornament
  (for adults and kids alike is to have everyone bring a favorite photo - kids, pets, themselves, etc. from the current year. You purchase glass (or if the kids are doing it on their own - wooden) ornaments, flat shapes work better than balls. We found some factory 2nd Victorian glass ornaments at Pic N Save for pennies each - they were regular colored glass ornaments in pretty shapes and had 2 flat sides with rounded edges - about 1/2" thick. You cut out the picture using craft scissors or pinking shears then glue to ornaments. Trim with bric brac trims in holiday colors or use "fabric" paints to create raised designs.
• Another option (w/o pictures)
  is to get clear round ornaments and confetti, holiday ribbons, bric brac, curling ribbon, lace and the like.....remove the metal topper on the ornament - insert your choice of items - return topper. The ones with lace - especially gold trimmed turn out very pretty.
• Buy frosted glass ornaments and paint pens
  you can draw directly on the glass making holly leaves and berries or small Christmas scenes depending on your artistic ability. Wooden shapes and a little ribbon make cute ones too. Michael's stocks a wide variety of wood and paper mache shapes that could be glued and painted....

Tomato Cage Christmas Tree
From: Betty

• Take a tomato cage turn it upside down.
• Wrap wire around the three wires sticking up.
• Take three garlands and wrap the garlands around the cage starting at the top.wrap fairly tight. fasten off. decorate as you like.
• Makes a nice little tree for small spaces.
• Christmas Tree Craft

Story of the Candy Cane
This is a very nice explanation of the meaning behind the candy cane which you can print out. It was sent to us by Dana who says, "I have a story of the candy cane that I hope you like.  I hope  that everyone is enjoys this and passes it along."

Charlene's New Vintage Egg Nog
Charlene says, "This recipe is an adaptation from old one. My hobby is collecting old, vintage cookbooks and I like to take some of those recipes and adapt them to my own. I tried it out on some friends last year and we all gave it two thumbs up." This includes recipes for both non-alcoholic and frozen alcoholic versions to satisfy all of your guests!!

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