Glittering Musical Ornament

As you may have seen in a recent post, I had the pleasure of guest posting over at Craft Snob this past week as part of the November Handmade Ornament Parade.  There are some fantastic creations over there, so I hope you'll go check some of them out!  As for mine, I'm finally sharing it here!

It may look like a normal ornament.  Glittering with utter lovelyness, granted... but what's so special?  It's a music box!  What a wonderful gift for someone (or yourself of course).  I will be making one for a certain someone in my life who seems to have 'everything' and is almost impossible to shop for.  I think most of us have someone like that in our lives.

Materials:
Music box workings
Mod Podge / brush
Glitter
Box cutter
Drill
Glue

Make sure your music box workings will fit into your ornament and that the wind up key will be able to come through the side with enough room to wind it up.  I chose to use a flatter style plastic ornament for this reason. I purchased it at my local craft store for super cheap.  Sometimes you can find them at the dollar store as well.

My music box workings are from Tuned Teeth, but you could recycle the workings from a music box rescued from the thrift store too.

Drill a hole in the ornament where you want the turn key to be.  Make sure the hole is a big enough that it wont interfere with the movement of the key.

Cut the ornament open.  I used a box cutter and it worked great.  I didn't cut through the neck of the ornament.  Just cut around the sides enough to get the music box inside.

This is the ugly part!  Glue the ornament to the inside.  Don't be skimpy.  I used E-6000 which is an awesome adhesive available at your local craft store, applied with an old paintbrush.  I then used it to glue the ornament back together.  Hard part over.  Go have some tea while it dries.

Coat the entire ornament with Mod Podge.  Load on the glitter!  Who doesn't love a little glitter?  Especially during the holidays!  Once it dries, make sure there are no naked spots.  If there is, do another layer of Mod Podge and glitter it again.  I got my glitter from the dollar store.  Try mixing various shades of the same colour glitter together.  It will look even more awesome when the light catches the different shades.  PS, I took off the turn key before this step so it wouldn't get covered in glitter.

I know, you're thinking, 'What the heck did she do to it!'.  Listen up, this is important.  Yes, we love glitter.  But do we love getting glitter all over the place?  On our hands, face, clothes?  Not really.  So this is my biggest tip.  Once you've got your ornament 'glitter-fied', give it a final coat of Mod Podge.  It will dry clear and it will still sparkle.  I promise!  And, no glitter transfer!  Once it's dry, glue the ornament top on and screw on the turn key.

Serious.Glitter.  And it sounds lovely too!  This one plays, 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas'.  And just in case you are wondering, the sound is clear and crisp, not muffled at all by being in the plastic ornament.

I hope you enjoy making your own!

Featured on Craft Snob's, Handmade Ornament Parade!