Make your own Christmas Ornaments #2: Floating Ornaments

Christmas is coming and I love making ornaments! How about you? If you didn’t see my first Christmas Ornament blog post, be sure to go back and check it out! It’s all about making Glitter Ornaments. In this post, I am going to share with you a few of my favorite Floating Ornaments I have made along with some tips for making them.

Basically, a floating ornament consists of an ornament shaped piece of acetate inside the ornament with something on it (a photo, a design, a saying, etc.) It essentially looks like it is floating inside the glass ball. The possibilities are endless and you can get very creative. You can make it as simple as inserting a photo or elaborate by adding in additional items with the acetate, such as fake snow, bells, or other items. It helps to have a cutting machine, such as a Cricut or Silhouette, if you want to make your own vinyl designs or lettering, however, you could purchase pre-made stickers, vinyl designs, or letters to use on the acetate as well as the outside of the ornament.

Supplies needed:

Glass Ball Ornaments (optional: plastic) – these can be purchased at any craft store, as well as Walmart or Amazon

A sheet of Acetate (I purchased mine off of Amazon)

The vinyl design you created or stickers and/or photo(s)

Optional – embellishments to put inside the ornament

Ribbon to hang your ornament

Scissors (you might also use a circle cutter if you have one to cut your photo)

Here are two links you can use if you have a Cricut!

3″ Ornament in Cricut Design Space

4″ Ornament in Cricut Design Space

General Directions:

1. Decide what you want to put inside of your ornament, then either create it with your Cricut or Silhouette, go find it at a Craft Store, or print a photo to use.
2. Cut out your ornament shape from the sheet of Acetate. If you do not have a cutting machine, you could find a stencil or print an ornament shape from the Internet, then trace and cut. You want your ornament shape to be just slightly smaller than your actual ornament, so it will fit inside and appear to be floating. I recommend using either 3 or 4-inch ornaments.
3. Adhere your design or photo to the acetate ornament. If using a vinyl design, you can use any transfer method you like. If you are using stickers, just stick them on the acetate directly. For photos, I recommend using a glue or tape runner, making sure to apply glue/tape all the way around the edge of the photo. If you are using a photo, you can make another circle out of paper for the backside and write on it or even put another photo! For example, if you used a photo from a vacation, you might put the location and date on the backside.
4. Insert the acetate ornament into the glass ornament. Carefully roll your acetate vertically until it is a size that will fit into the opening of the ornament. Stick the rolled up acetate into the glass ornament, bottom first. Hold onto the top part of the acetate ornament as you are doing so to make sure it goes in correctly. Once it is in the ornament ball, you can use tweezers or Cricut weeder to straighten it out in the ball. Sometimes it helps to put a small glue dot at the top opening to hold the acetate in place, but usually not necessary.
5. Embellish away! You can add a name or saying with vinyl on the outside of the vinyl if you used a photo. You can add ribbon, bells, snow, glitter, whatever you like, get creative!

In the photo above are some design examples I have found that could be used inside of an ornament. When using Santa and his reindeer, you could make them look as if they were flying through the sky. You might add fake snow to the bottom of your ornament or even star decals on the outside. With the two deer scenes, you could use different color vinyl or just black and then add fake snow to the bottom of the ornament, so it looks like the deer are standing in the snow. With the Nativity design, you could just use the manger with Joseph, Mary, and Baby Jesus or the whole thing, and you could put hay/straw in the bottom of your ornament and maybe even a star decal on the top of the outside. If you search “Floating Ornament” on Google and click on “images”, you will see tons of ideas. You can also search on Pinterest or YouTube. I hope my blog has at least inspired you to get creative and give making your own ornaments a try! Follow my blog to see more craft tutorials like this and please go over to my Pinterest page and share your completed project photos with me. Thanks for stopping by! Kristina

Update: Just made this Bigfoot ornament and had to share! So much fun!