This is our very first year with a full-sized Christmas tree! I loved my little apartment-sized bookshelf trees we had in years past, but gosh is it fun to decorate a big tree in our new home — it feels just a little more like the holidays seeing it in our breakfast nook. One challenge with upgrading from a mini-tree to a 7ft tall tree is we never really owned full-sized ornaments. I have been on the hunt for the perfect colored glass balls to fill in the gaps between our smaller, more sentimental ornaments. Of course, I gravitated right to bright-colors and expensive price tags (like these and these), but couldn’t justify breaking the bank when I knew I needed lots of them. So I DIY’ed my own in the simplest way possible!
I hit up the craft store and scored tons of clear glass ornaments on Black Friday and picked out a palette of acrylic paints in cheery pinks and reds and greens. Then I filled the inside of each ornament up with a few drops of paint and shook them up (wrap a paper towel around them to prevent leaks) to coat the inside and saturate the glass with color. That’s it! Then just let them dry completely before hanging on the tree(and a word to the wise: let them really, really dry. I dropped one on the ground after one-day of drying and it can only be described as a glass and paint explosion — oops! Lesson learned!). They look so festive on our tree, I’m so happy with how they turned out. 
I wish I’d been this clever with our first tree. I literally tied red ribbons around the whole thing to make it look less sad.
I love the idea of ribbons! Might need to borrow that idea.
Hi Kate, these are darling. Will you please share what brand of paint you used? I tried this a few years ago, and it was an epic fail!
Carey, I used Martha Stewart brand acrylic paints from Michael’s craft stores. I think the key is really letting them dry, keeping the tops off of them seems to help!