My boys and I are on an ornament mission this year. We are in the process of setting up our Christmas tree… for various reasons it’s taken us almost a week to get it all set up… But we are closing in on the home stretch. The worst part is over and tonight we get to decorate! I have a box of ornaments that I collected growing up and Mr Napping has his special ornaments as well. My boys don’t have much of their own yet. So, we’re changing that! We started with a fun Rudolph ornament. It’s super easy, even Little J (almost 4) was able to do most of it on his own and it only took about 10 minutes.

GLASS BALL RUDOLPH ORNAMENT

Rudolph Ornament Materials:

– Glass Ball. I realize that’s a little misleading because I actually used these fun square Glass Ornaments (affilate link) and I love how they turned out! A regular round glass ornament would work just as well though. The larger your ornament the larger googly eyes and pom pom ball you’re probably going to want, so consider size when you’re looking at the glass ornaments.
– Brown acrylic paint
– Hot glue gun and glue sticks
– Brown pipe cleaner
– Googly eyes
– Red small pom pom ball
– Paper cup

Rudolph Ornament Directions:

– Carefully take the top off the ornament and set it aside where it won’t get smashed.
– Squeeze some brown paint into the ornament. How much paint you’ll need will partially depend on the size of your ornament. You want enough to cover the entire inside of the ornament with paint. We used about a tablespoon to a tablespoon and a half.
– Roll the paint around inside the ornament until it completely covers the interior of the ornament. Be careful and don’t let it roll out the hole when you do the top. You can put your finger over the hole or just be super careful.
– Use the hot glue gun to glue the googly eyes in the middle of the ornament,

– Glue the pom pom nose at the bottom.

– Twist the pipe cleaner around the top of the ornament up by the hole. Glue it in place.
– Place the ornament over the paper cup and use the pipe cleaner to hang it upside down inside the cup so the extra paint can drain out of the ornament. Let it sit 24-48 hours or until the paint is totally dry inside the ornament.

– When the paint is dry, put the ornament cap back on the glass ball.
– Make antlers out of the ends of the pipe cleaner. You kinda just have to play with it until you get it like you want it. I made antlers for three of these Rudolph ornaments and I did each set of antlers differently. The easiest way was to pinch the pipe cleaner together where you want to create points on the antlers. Arrange and tweak it to lay how you like it best.
– Attach a hook to your ornament cap and hang. I created hooks out of paper clips because I didn’t know where all our extra hooks were, so that’s an option if you don’t have a bunch of extras laying around. Or ribbon works well too.

I loved this Rudolph ornament project because they turned out great and my boys were able to do a lot of it on their own. It was also easy and quick enough to put together that my kids didn’t lose interest half way through and leave me to finish them all on my own. It was a great before-bedtime activity during the dreaded witching hour. And my boys are still pointing out their Rudolph ornaments to anyone who comes to our house and will listen to them brag…

This was definitely my very most favorite part… They actually liked doing a project with mommy. My boys have never been ones to enjoy any kind of artistic creativity so it was kind of a big deal that they actually made Rudolph ornaments and they liked it!