Blogmas Day 1- Announcement + DIY Ornaments

I guess this is a late announcement as its already Day 1, but based on my readers' feedback plus inspiration from the vloggers on Youtube, I've decided to put my own spin on the Vlogmas tradition that has swept Youtube the past few years and I will be doing Blogmas instead! For those of you who don't know what Blogmas is, I'll be writing a blog post every single day from December 1 to December 25 in celebration of my favorite holiday. The topics will vary (hopefully a strong Christmas theme though), but new original content will be up every day. Yes, it will be so much work and a lot of content creating, but I'm so excited! Christmas is my favorite time of the year and its especially beautiful in New York. I love all the over the top store window decorations, the array of shining lights, the festive atmosphere, and best of all, the holiday parties! I can't wait to share all my holiday happenings with all of you.

During my Thanksgiving break back at home with my family, my sister and I spent the whole week decorating ornament balls and they turned out fantastic! It was actually more fun than I expected to design and paint all the ornaments. We started out with traditional Christmas themes like snowflakes and Santa, but ended up gravitating towards our favorite characters from Disney and other cartoon shows after seeing and inspirational Mickey and Minnie Mouse ornament.

All you need to make these ornaments is plastic (or glass) clear ornaments that you can get from any craft store, different colors of acrylic paint, and extra materials like ribbon or rhinestones or pipe cleaners. Links below!

Ornaments: http://www.michaels.com/6.7cm-clear-plastic-ornaments-by-artminds-12-pieces/10525254.html#q=clear+ornaments&start=2

Rhinestones: http://www.michaels.com/david-tutera-adhesive-rhinestones-sheet-silver/D034922S.html#q=rhinestones&start=9

Acrylic Paint: http://www.michaels.com/americana-neon-lights-fluorescent-acrylic-paint/M10483883.html?dwvar_M10483883_color=Peach#q=acrylic+paint&start=19

My sister and I simply googled all the designs we did and chose what we thought was in our talent range (we aren't professional artists after all!). Beware though that the ornaments may require several layers of paint in order to be fully colored so make sure you have time to spare. Another thing that bothered us was that since the ball was round it was hard to paint and not smear so we ended up putting one finger in the top of the ornament (after removing the silver part) to paint and then just blow drying our ornament until dry. Luckily acrylic paint dries quickly!

See any of your favorite characters? Get read to get creative!