Jane Austen Ornament Tutorial

 

I love Jane Austen's books, and thought

I needed to give her a place

on my new Christmas tree.

 

 (The black on white version.)

 

(The white on blue version.)

 

Would you like to make one?

 

First, you'll need clear glass ornaments from a craft store, extra fine glitter, and Pledge Floor Care with Future Shine.

 

 ( This bottle at Walmart was about $6.00.  A little goes a long way with this project.  If you've got a craft-loving friend, maybe they'll split the cost with you for half of the Future Shine product.)

 

1.  Remove the metal ornament cap.

 

2.  Pour the Pledge Floor Care liquid into the glass ornament (about 1 Tbsp.)

 

3.  Cover the ornament hole with your thumb and shake the ornament gently until the entire inside of the glass is coated with the Pledge Floor Care.

 

4.  Pour any excess Floor Care back into the bottle.

 

5.  With a small funnel (I made one out of a 3X 5 card), pour in a generous amount of extra fine glitter.

 

6.  Cover the ornament's hole with your thumb and shake gently until the glitter has coated all of the inside of the glass.

 

7.  Still covering the ornament hole with your thumb, rinse off any Floor Care product and glitter that may have attached to the outside of the ornament.

 

8.  After drying, replace the ornament caps.

 

9.  Copy and paste the Jane Austen silhouette to a Word Document or art program such as Publisher.

 

(Even in Word, you can control the size of the silhouette

by clicking on the image you've pasted. 

 Once the thin-lined box appears

around the pasted image, reduce or enlarge it

by clicking and dragging one of the corner edges.)

 

10.   Print the image on regular copy paper and cut out the silhouette. 

For the white Jane Austen silhouette, I simply traced a cut image onto the white copy paper.  The image was embellished with a silver-inked snowflake stamp.

 

11.  Apply a thin layer of Mod Podge Gloss-Lustre to the front of the ornament.

 

12.  Carefully position the cut silhouette onto the Mod Podge.

 

13.  Cover over the silhouette with Mod Podge to seal the paper.

 

14.  Finish your ornament with buttons or crystals and coordinating ribbons.

 

Here are a few lessons I learned along the way.  Do one ornament at a time.  The Pledge Floor Care dries too quickly to try to do more than one at a time.  Once you've added glitter, trying to add more Floor Care to cover a missed spot doesn't work well.  Stick to extra fine glitter for best results.

 

 

What do you think?

 

Jane Austen's popular silhouette has a story all its own.

 

This famous small image was discovered inside

a second edition of Mansfield Park.

Above the pasted image was a reference to "Jane."

( See Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury by Rebecca Dickson, Metro Books, 2008.)

 

Hmmm . . . do you think it's her?

 

 

 Amy