Spicing Up Christmas Ornaments Pt. 1

Since returning from grad school, I've, unfortunately, been unemployed. I have an extreme weakness for Christmas decorations but I sadly cannot afford to be buying new ones right now. So this year I decided to try and spice up some old decorations we have. These are just some small things I've done so far but I plan on working on the Christmas ornaments this week and next as I haven't gone through them yet.

I started off with these trees and small village houses. They're all very old and look pretty gross. I really only put them out because it's just something we've always done. Here they are before.

I ended up just throwing away the second one because the fake snow it had on it had just turned completely brown after all the years and it was beyond saving. The first and third trees don't look very different but the fourth one I covered with fake snow and it looks great! It was just too much of a vivid green for a winter wonderland (final image of tree can be seen below in winter wonderland scene). I also used fake snow on the tree below which had been plain. For these old (I suppose I should say vintage) houses, I used snow-tex to cover up the old fake snow that had yellowed and added it to parts of the houses that look a little dilapidated. I also painted the bushes green again. I wish I could have fixed the paper inside that made little stained glass type windows.

My biggest makeover was this ice skating rink. It was so dirty and had icky fake snow that had turned brown with age. We think it must have had a mirror at one point in it that is long gone.

 

I cleaned it off and sprinkled a cellophane glitter I'd found at Michaels on the surface (left) and then covered that with Mod-Podge Dimensional Magic (right).

I then covered it with fake snow because who has a green pond in a winter wonderland? I probably should have put something under the glitter like white paper because the green still shows through the Mod-Podge but it looks so much better! I am no longer embarrassed to display it!

 Here is our new winter wonderland! You can see the snowified tree by the train.

My next mini project was to take this wreath my neighbor made for us a few years ago. I've always really liked it but a lot of the pieces fell off when we used to hang it on our front door. The sun hits really hard there all day and it gets so hot between the front door and the storm door that the glue melts so you pretty much can't put anything there.

I found a few of the pieces still in the decorations box (a couple snowflakes and gold pine cones) so I glued those back on, removed the faded ribbon, and added some red bells and a couple pine cones from outside that I covered with snow-tex.  It is now proudly displayed in the living room away from that destructive door!

I plan to rummage through the ornament boxes soon to see what else I can fix up! I am really loving the snow-tex! I used a whole bunch of it on these little snow angels my grandfather made. They were really...creepy...looking. I forgot to take before pictures but maybe I'll post an after later. I just used snow to cover all the creepy things up! It works wonders! A great investment for spicing up old ornaments that are too sentimental to get rid of!