For my holiday cards I purchased some pigment powders from LuminArte. The product is called 'primary element's and comes in 3 flavors: regular pigment powders, iridescent mica powders, and straight up mica powders. As I was poking around their site, I saw they had a tutorial for using said powders to make ornaments. Now the pictures sure were pretty, but I wasn't sure that I was interested in branching out. I mean, I like crafts and all, but I generally want to avoid picking up every neat thing I see resulting in an overflowing craft room and dozens of unfinished or never even started projects.
However, after rolling the idea around some more I checked out the YouTube tutorial and thought that a) the finished product is awesome, b) I already owned the most expensive part (the powders), so the additional cost would be low, and c) it looked so easy! So I trotted on down to my local stamp shop to buy some remaining goods and picked up some uber cheap clear glass ornaments from Hobby Lobby and I was off! Except I was never able to get anything other than the regular pigment powders. Shoot. I went ahead and made a few ornaments and found it was indeed easy and produced a fabulous result, so I went ahead and placed an order directly with LuminArte online and got some flashy mica powders (regular and iridescent). I was set! I cranked out about 20 ornaments total- though sadly did not take picture until I had given most of them away.
12 were packaged up and sent off to my step MIL as a Christmas present which was quite well received. I was a little unsure about giving them as a gift- after all she is a person not a tree, but she was touched that I made something just for her and she thinks they're beautiful, so score for Jess!
One other was given away as part of a thank-you gift for my neighbor for watering our tree while we were away visiting family. The rest that are left are pictured below. These are a mix of ones I liked the least and ones I wanted to keep just for me.
Close ups! I really like the way these came out. The colors swirled a lot on these, that is partly why I like them so much.
This was a fun and pretty easy project. It was however not cheap initially if you have to buy everything and quite messy. The little jars of powder seem like they will last a decently long time, although some are already half empty (oh no!). I hope to find some other ways to use these. I'm going to investigate decorating glass plates/bowls with these. I'm thinking I can paint/powder the underside and apply some sort of sealant and it will be ok. That would also make a killer gift for someone like my mom who doesn't have much need for Christmas ornaments. :)
