a tale of anthro, martha, and lots of glitter

Let me tell you the story of how we made our Christmas snow globes. My inspiration first came from Anthropologie.com where I spied these snow globes in their holiday section. I had every intention of making similar globes for our home. After a visit to the store, I was a little disappointed to find that their snow globes did not contain water- just faux snow at the bottom of the jar. I decided to modify their version to include water. And that's where Martha came in. I read her tutorial for homemade snow globes and assembled the necessary supplies. 

I purchased little bottle brush trees from Michaels, cheap jars in a variety of sizes from World Market and Michaels.  I also got a few small ornaments to throw into the globes. Luckily (being a Kindergarten teacher) I happened to have gigantic jars of glitter, just laying around.  The other items we needed were: glycerin, distilled water,  and clear drying epoxy.

You can read Martha Stewart's directions in more detail here, but this is how we did it. 

First, we used a clear drying epoxy to glue down the tree and various odds and ends to the lid of the jars. The size of each jar's opening dictated how much we could fit on each lid. 

Next, I filled each jar with an inch or so white and silver glitter. 

Then, we poured in distilled water and several drops of glycerin (purchased at Walgreens). 

Finally, Nick used the epoxy to secure the lid to the jar- making sure these guys wouldn't leak when turned over. 

Some things we learned through trial and error:

1. The small ornaments and pinecones made the globes super cloudy over time.

2. The more glycerin, the more "floaty" your snow. 

3. The trees that weren't flocked turned the water blueish green.

Overall, we're really happy with the results and even though some of our snow globes didn't turn out- we have 4 pretty ones displayed in our house this season. 

I shared at Censational Girl!