Gold Leaf Ornaments

I have been wanting to make these beautiful ornaments for some time now, but time was getting away from me, so today was the day!

Step 1: Start with clear glass balls from amazon, I bought them with the silver tops and spray painted the tops gold with spray paint.

You cannot use acrylic balls, they must be glass.

Step 2: Using white acrylic paint ( I bought this at Michaels)  squirt some into the glass ball and shake it until the white paint has covered the entire inside of the ball.

Step 3: Turn the ornaments upside down and let the residual paint drain out of the ornament into a plastic cup , I like to let them sit overnight and drain.

Step 4: Remove the ornaments from the cup and let them air dry for several hours.

Step 5: Put ornament back onto the plastic cup and paint on the gold leafing adhesive with a brush, only put the adhesive where you want the gold leafing to adhere to the ornament. Let this sit for around 20-30  minutes until it is tacky to the touch. It only takes a little bit of adhesive, you don’t want it to drip, so watch it to be sure you have not put too much on.

Step 6: Remove one sheet of the gold leave ( keeping the  orange backing paper on )  and place over the bottom of the ornament and rub lightly, and then remove the  orange backing paper. It should look like the below.

Step 7: Using a dry inexpensive paint brush burnish the gold foil and remove any loose pieces.

Step 8: Tie a piece of gold ribbon to the top and hang on the tree or display them in a lovely bowl.

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