Amazing Casting Products: From Trash to Treasured Ornaments... Holiday #Cre8time Upcycling with Maria Soto

Friday, December 26

From Trash to Treasured Ornaments... Holiday #Cre8time Upcycling with Maria Soto

Hi there! Maria here today sharing a project that's perfectly timed – especially in planning for next year holiday decorating. Every year I like to make new ornaments for our tree. Now since we have a kitten who is still very playful, we didn't have a big tree last Christmas... and well we are not having one this year either. My two youngest made me a little Christmas tree when they were in 8th grade, so these two trees are our Christmas trees these year.

During one of my summer garage sales I purchased a lot of old fashioned lights, and when I tested them out, one literally blew out as I plugged it in – and I got to see lot of golden sparks! So I removed all the light bulbs and decided to keep them so I could use them for ornaments.

It sure was a fun and messy craft day for me, I decided to the two types of resin and the Silver and Gold metallic powders from Alumilite. It looked like this would be a very simple and easy project. I figured I would just pour the resin over the bulbs, let it set and then just go crazy embellishing them. Well let's just say I ended up with sticky hands... very sticky hands! I guess I got clumsy after spending 12 hours crafting – it was one of those days when all you want to do is craft, craft, craft!

First things first, I got my Amazing Clear Cast Resin, my measuring cups, Alumilite Silver Metallic Powder, wood mixing stick, a bowl to mix my resin and a piece of recycled Styrofoam (from a package) to hold the light bulbs.

With everything was ready to get started, I decided to use the silver metallic powder first. I added some to the part "A" of the Amazing Clear Cast Resin {click here to view mixing instructions}. Once I had the powder in my measuring cup, I mixed it for a while, then I poured it into my red bowl, then added part "B" of the resin and mixed it for a couple minutes. Once the resin and the metallic power was ready all I did was pour it over the light bulbs, you can see on the photos below.

Here you see the resin getting poured over the light bulbs. I chose to do this instead of dipping them, I wanted some of the original bulb colors to show.

This was a very thin layer of resin, so I just waited a couple of hours before going back to them – in the mean time I went to work on other projects.

I liked the look of the light bulbs, but I wanted more dimension – so I decided to add more resin. This time however I used the Amazing Casting Resin and Alumilite Gold Metallic Powder. You mix this resin the same way you mix the clear cast resin {click here to view mixing/preparation}, but you need to remember this resin sets pretty fast {like in ten minutes}, so you have to move fast once the metallic powder is mixed well with the resin.

Here you can see the second pour of resin. I noticed the gold was not as bright as I wanted it to be. Since this resin only takes about 10 minutes to cure, I prepared another batch of the Amazing Clear Cast Resin mixed with the gold metallic powder.

This was the last resin pour I made. This project was supposed to be easy and fast, but well I had to keep going until I was happy with the final results.

After the last pour, I left the light bulbs alone to cure overnight, since the Amazing Clear Cast Resin does take longer to cure. The next day, I removed them from the styrofoam so I could finish embellishing these light bulbs – they are done, and ready for the final steps.

Now to finish these ornaments, I thought adding glitter would be a good idea! I took out my glitter pens and decided to add a little bit of gold first over the golden resin. Then I added glitters to match each original color of the bulbs – the point was to not completely cover the bulbs, but to add dimension. Using layers of the resin did just that.

I turned the styrofoam over and placed the bulbs back

in it, just to make it easier for the glitter to dry.

One by one, I took each light bulb and started

to add glitter to a few areas only.

Here you can see all the bulbs have glitter on them. I just had to wait for the glitter to completely dry before adding wire and ribbon to finish them up for hanging on the tree.

I had some gold wire ribbon, but it was too wide to use it. So I cut the wires from the edges of the ribbon, then cut the ribbon in half – this way I could use the wire to make the hangers; and the ribbon was now thin enough to wrap around the metal parts of the bulbs making ribbon bows. I'm excited to finish these up and have them ready to hang on my small silver tinsel tree my daughter made in 8th grade {now that was 5 years ago}. This tree comes out every Christmas, this time the lights don't work, so it's used to display these tiny recycled light ornaments.

My tiny Christmas tree is all decorated, ready for display!!!

Our Christmas tree is all decorated! I hope that my post has inspired you to make your own ornaments. I've been making our ornaments for many years – this project gleamed new light to my old burnt-out bulbs.

How would you use these amazing products

in your ornaments to give them a new look?

Share your projects with us, we love to see what

everyone creates with Amazing Casting Products.