Test Tube Snow Globe Ornaments

After making the most adorable little Christmas truck ornaments {inspired by Little Blue Truck’s Christmas} with Sam earlier this week, today Miss G and I made her book-inspired ornament of the year… Test tube snow globe ornaments inspired by the pages of Ada Twist, Scientist!  I wasn’t sure how they were going to turn out, but now that they’re done, I think they’re so beautiful and fun!

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If you’ve not read Ada Twist, Scientist, you must…  Along with the other books in the collection (Rosie Revere, Engineer and Iggy Peck, Architect), it’s one of our absolute favourites.  Ada is endlessly curious and while her experiments and quests to figure out how things work often wreak havoc in her family’s day-to-day life, she learns the value of thinking her way through things and always remaining curious.

The pages of the book are filled with bottles of Ada’s colourful concoctions and experiments, which is exactly what inspired Miss G’s little test tube snow globe ornaments.

There’s a lot of wiggle room as far as which materials you use for these test tube snow globe ornaments, but here’s what we used to make ours:

– little glass craft jars with screw on lids (I REALLY wanted ones with rounded bottoms like these ones with cork tops, but alas… small town living doesn’t always allow for these things.  We ended up finding these very similar flat-bottomed glass craft jars at our local Dollarama and they worked just fine. In fact, they’re probably better for the fact that they stand on their own while making them, but they’re just not quite as test tube like.)

– Gorilla Contact Adhesive (I wouldn’t use something like this with Sam, but Miss G is 8 now and this glue worked really well)

– mini bottle brush trees (we found ours at Michael’s in the Tiny Treasures section)

– water

– liquid food colouring

– different types of confetti and slime add-ins

– water

– embroidery thread

– washi tape (which we ended up adding into the mix at the last minute)

Here’s a closer look at the little confetti bits and slime add-ins I put out for Miss G to use.  These were all things that came in one of those big slime making add-in kits you can order online.

Here’s how Grae made her test tube snow globes…

First up, she tested the bottle brush trees in the glass craft jars to make sure they fit well.

Most of them fit perfectly and the ones that didn’t simply got a little trim.

Then it was time to adhere the trees in the bottoms of the test tubes.  To do this, we simply followed the instructions on the Gorilla Contact Adhesive packaging and put a little glue on the base of the tree, a little glue in the bottom of the test tube, let both sit for two minutes, and then carefully put the tree down into the test tube and pushed it down firmly.  {In true Miss G fashion, the two minutes of waiting just HAD to be filled with reading.}

Now while the glue we used does say that it’s ‘immediate contact’, it also says that the glue isn’t fully cured for 24 hours, so we probably should have waited before adding water, but we didn’t.  We gave the trees 10 or 15 minutes to set, then went ahead with the project like the impatient people we are – hah!  One thing to note is that the trees / test tubes that we used a thin layer of adhesive on definitely formed a more immediate bond, while the ones with more adhesive were still wiggly when we moved on to the next step

Next up, the water.

Aren’t they pretty just like this?

Then Grae worked on tinting the water with liquid food colouring.  Because a full drop was too much for the amount of water in our little test tubes, she used a food pick to add the teeniest bit of colouring at a time until the colour was just right.

With the water the perfect shade, she added in all of the confetti, bits, and bobs her little heart desired.

Here are her finished test tube snow globes…  Aren’t they gorgeous?

At this point you could secure the test tube lids with glue, but we skipped that part and just ensured that they were screwed on as tightly as possible.

Now while I thought we’d tie our baker’s twine / embroidery thread around the test tubes and create our little hanging loop that way, it just didn’t work out how we thought it would…  Instead, we opted to tape a little loop of thread to either side of the lid and then secure everything with several rounds of decorative washi tape, which I think looks really cute too.

Here they are all done and ready for the tree!

This post is part of the awesome  10 Days of #KidMadeChristmas Ornaments series we’ve participated in in years past…  If you’re looking for some fantastic ornament ideas to try at home with your kids, pop over and check out the master list of kid-made ornaments – there are SO many lovely ones this year!

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