Christmas Ornament: Polar Bear in an Ice Cave

     This weekend consisted of a lot of experimentation with ornaments.  I had found this fantastic glitter paint that I wanted to try using to coat the inside of glass ornaments.  I thought that maybe it would be even easier than glittering.  (Boy, was I WRONG.)

     In the course of my ornament experimentation, I managed to blow up an ornament in my oven, resulting in a massive glitter bomb.  I also wasted more ornaments than I care to think about trying different techniques.

     One of those techniques was just coating the outside of the ornament.  It was successful, but what's the point if you can't adhere vinyl to it and can find them at any dollar store... minus the mess and hassle?

     While coating the outside of the ornament, I noticed that the paint dripped down in a neat way.  So I did one ornament that was completely coated to test the technique, and the other one, I added significantly less.  I WANTED the drips.  To me, it looked like a cave... an ice cave.  Awesome.  I immediately knew what I wanted to do.

And I also did the back.

     When I was thinking about the design of the ornament, I went looking for some cute polar bear artwork, but nothing seemed to fit what I was looking for.  So I made my own.  :)

     I'm really loving the Designer Edition of Silhouette Studio.  Lots of neat tricks!

     I cut out all the vinyl, adhered it to my transparency to make the bear "float" in the middle of the glass ornament, and then added Swarovski crystals to the snowflakes for a little extra pop.  Super excited about this one!

And a few pictures of my experiments this past weekend.

     The vast majority were fails... but you can't win them all!

Poly Polar Bear Ornament

Last week, I made the poly pig for Cam's Christmas ornament this year, so I decided to knock out Scarlett's next.  I came up with this little guy:

Made him using Sculpey original (body and snowflake) and Sculpey Studio (eyes, foot pads, nose, scarf, and holly bunch).  Baked at 275 degrees for 25 minutes.  This picture is taken after he had baked and then had his eyes painted.  He's still not done yet, waiting on my Amazon order to arrive so I can paint the snowflake with glitter paint and possibly do some shading with soft pastels before I glaze him and add his hanging ribbon..  Not sure on the soft pastels, though... I've never used them before and it makes me a bit nervous.  Might just stick with painting a glittery snowflake.  :)

    A few other pics of him before he was baked/painted:

    I think she'll get a kick out of him.  We'll see!