A few people wanted to know how they were made so here's a step by step with some pictures!
This is all you need:
Clear glass ornaments, and however many colors of acrylic paint you want. I am doing all of mine with red, green, and white but you could do any color combos you wanted! I know some people decorate their trees in blue, etc, so blue and white would look really pretty together, too. Then you just need some ribbon to tie around the topper so that you can hang your ornament!
First, you take the topper out of the ornament. Squirt the paint into the ornament...you can do all of the colors at once.
Next, swirl the ornament to get the paint covering every bit. You will have to tap it against the palm of your hand and there will be a couple of spots that don't seem to want to cover. Just keep tapping it until it covers up, and you can add more paint if necessary. It's normal for it not to be marbled yet-you're just getting the paint across the whole ornament right now, so there will probably be big chunks of one color, etc. It should look like this:
You can also see the extra paint that got on the outside of the ornament-don't worry, it comes right off with a washcloth and some water :)
Next, turn the ornament upside down and let it drain out for 10 minutes. You can do this in an egg carton, but we didn't have any so I just propped it against something on some wax paper.
Now comes the part where it marbles. Make sure all the excess paint is drained out, then turn the ornament on it's side. Leave it there for 10 minutes. Still on it's side, turn it a quarter and let it sit for another 10 minutes. Keep doing this until it's set 4 times. After this, you can set it upright, upside down, and on the other side, and do the quarter turns for 10 minutes each...but I didn't. I didn't have that much time, and they turned out just fine on doing it once.
After that I let mine sit overnight to make sure they were dry. Then you just put the topper back on (be careful not to scrape the paint with the wires from the topper) and tie a ribbon through it so it can be hung on the tree! My ribbon was a bit thick and didn't really tie very well without having a huge bow. I stapled the first one just to see the finished look but I don't like the staple sticking out. So I suppose if you have a hot glue gun, that would probably be the best route to go to secure the ribbon.
And this is what you end up with:
Pretty cool, right? I think they would make a great gift if you're making baskets for people, you could wrap the basket and tie a ribbon around it and secure an ornament onto the ribbon. Or make some for yourself to make your tree look beautiful at little cost to you. Let me know if you have any questions!!
