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
– 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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Not too long ago, Miss G ‘s 
This time, we started with an ‘O’ shaped cardboard base. Gracen glued her puzzle pieces (this time using just regular white glue) onto the cardboard doughnut, overlapping them as she went along.
When the ‘O’ was covered to her liking, we set it aside to dry for a while.
Later in the day, she came back and painted the puzzle piece wreath all green. She quickly discovered that dabbing the paint on gave much better coverage than brushing it on, so she went with that method.
When she was done painting, we let the wreath dry again.
Next came the really fun part – decorations! She chose magenta sequins as holly berries, but you could easily use buttons, mini pompoms, foam circles, or dot stickers too. Just add some dots of glue to the wreath and pop your decorations on.
The last step was adding a little ribbon bow I’d quickly made for her… Regular white glue worked just fine for this job too.
Today, 
While puzzle pieces are the main material, a few other things are needed to make this pretty little ornament… Glue of some sort (craft glue or hot glue would probably work best), some white crafter’s acrylic and a paintbrush, a scrap of cardboard or card stock cut into a circle, a small piece of ribbon or string to hang the ornament from, and some glitter (completely optional, but not in Miss G’s opinion).
To get started, glued 3 puzzle pieces onto our cardboard circle, evenly spaced like this.
During the process, we quickly realized that pieces shaped similarly to this one were going to work the best, so we dug those out and put the others aside.
Next, we added 3 more puzzle pieces. We tried to place them on top of the original 3 as the instructions say to do, but when it didn’t work out very well for us, we slid the original 3 out closer to the edges, and added the next 3 onto the edges of the cardboard circle too. It worked out perfectly and was much easier for Gracen to do.
When our snowflake was completely dry about an hour later, Gracen gave it a good once over with white paint.
While the paint was still wet, she did the job I think she looks forward to most when crafting…. She sprinkled on a very generous amount of sparkles over the entire thing.
Later in the evening when her snowflake was dry, I hot glued a little loop of ribbon onto the back, and voila – a new handmade ornament to add to our tree.
This heart ornament also started as a flattened ball, and then I used a cookie cutter to push just part of the way through to the dough to make the heart shape.
