I have difficulty thinking of gifts for my family because they have everything they want, and I’m too removed from their lives to know what they’d like or need. So, I make them gifts. It’s cost-effective, fun to do, and shows the people I love that I care about them. This year, I made Christmas tree snow globes.
Saving on Supplies
I got practically all the supplies at the Dollar Store around Christmas time. When doing crafts in general, I highly recommend checking a thrift store or Dollar Store before heading to a Hobby Lobby or Michaels. It’s far more cost-effective. The materials for all 5 of these snow globes cost me about $10.
I used spaghetti sauce jars that I washed and removed the labels with goo-be-gone. It’s a little tedious, but a hobby store will sell mason jars to you for $2-$3 each. I already buy spaghetti sauce, so saving the jars just makes sense.
I wrapped the lids in cloth on most of the jars to cover the spaghetti sauce labels. On a sale day, I went to the thrift store and found Christmas-themed dishcloths for $1 each. I bought two and only used half of one.
You don’t need to limit yourself to the crafting section. I wanted to make little trees and assumed I’d make them out of pipe cleaners. I went to the Dollar Store and loaded up on green pipe cleaners. Then, as I wandered around, I came to the cleaning supplies section, and I saw a bunch of green dish-cleaning pads. Perfect! I bought three packs of five for $1 each. I ended up using about one pad per tree, so I still have plenty left over.
Materials
Let’s get down to how I made these things. For each snow globe, you’ll need the following:
1 jar to hold your tree. Any jar will do as long as it has an opening wide enough to fit your tree inside. Make sure you have a lid.
2 gold pipe cleaners for tinsel. Or any other color you desire. Colored string could work well, too.
10 – 15 red bells for tree ornaments. I was disappointed to realize you can’t hear the bells in the jars, though it seems obvious in hindsight. So, something like beads, little wooden balls, or even red poof balls would be a good substitute. You could use a variety of fun colors instead of just red, but I recommend using a color different from your tinsel.
1 bow for a tree topper. My bows came premade, but you can make them yourself with a ribbon and a twist tie. Instead of bows, little stars or angels would be cute for tree toppers if you find them.
1-2 green dish-cleaning pads. These worked out great for my needs. If you’re using a similar sized jar to mine, you’ll probably only need 1 pad.
About 1/4 cup of fake snow. Mine was little foam balls, and I think I had about 1/2 cup each. I also put about a table spoon of silver glitter in each jar, but it just fell to the bottom. Unless you make a tall stump, you’ll want less snow than you think. I wish I hadn’t filled mine quite as much as I did. The glitter by itself probably would’ve been fine.
About 1 square foot of Christmas-themed cloth to cover the lid, or you could paint the lids. Make sure the cloth is thin; otherwise, you won’t be able to close the jars.
Some thin scrap cardboard for the tree trunks. I just used old toilet paper rolls, but an old cereal box or snack box would work too, as long as one side is brown.
Tools :
- Hot glue gun
- Heavy-duty scissors (I used my normal crafting scissors to cut the dish pads, and it ruined my scissors.)
- About an hour of spare time
The Process
Step 1. Make the branches
The dishwashing pads I got were 4 in by 6 in and about 1/4 in thick. I cut the pad in half to make two 3×4 squares.
I cut one of the 3×4 squares into 2 again, and then each of those halves into 4 strips. I cut the other 3×4 square into 3. Then, one strip into 4 strips, and the other two into 5 strips. If that’s hard to follow, this picture below is one pad.
Make sure your longest strips fit lengthwise into your jar. It’s okay if it’s a squeeze since you can wiggle your tree inside, but make sure it’s not too tight, or you might have trouble once the tree is decorated. I found that with this size, I had no trouble fitting my trees in with only a bit of wiggling.
Alternately you can take the pad and cut it lengthwise into one 2.5in by 6in strip, and one 1.5 in by 6in strip. Then you can cut those strips into your branches. Either way works, and I would experiment with what you want for your tree.
Cut the corners off each strip to round it out a little.
Then about every 1/8th inch (just guestimate, don’t waste time measuring it out), make a small 1/8th inch deep cut, so you get something like this below. If you accidentally cut one in half, don’t worry about it, you can use it for the top of the tree.
Then, twist it around a bit to give it some volume. Don’t worry about making each one look perfect; they’ll flatten out when you get to gluing the tree together.
Do this for all of the branch pieces except for one of the smaller ones. Cut this one in half. Round out the corners of one half to create a circle. Then, make the 1/8th-inch cuts around the circumference of the circle and ruffle them up a bit to give them volume. Take the over half and cut it into a triangle. These will be the top of your tree.
Step 2: Make the Tree
I forgot to take process pictures as I made the original trees, and I don’t feel like making a whole new one just to get pictures, so from here on out, use your imagination.
Now that you have a bunch of twisty branches, it’s time to stack them. I wasted a lot of hot glue on this project. I tried to glue literal sponges together, which absorbed the hot glue. Sewing them together is probably a better option.
You’ll want to stack your branches across each other at 30-degree angles (mine aren’t twisty, so you can see the positioning easier). Start with the longest thickest ones at the bottom and work your way up through the thinner ones and then the shorter ones. (If you glue them, be careful because hot glue can seep through the sponge and burn your fingers!) Stack until you feel your tree is tall enough. You may not end up using all of the smaller ones.
Once you have all your branches stacked, affix the circle piece to the top. Then, the triangle on top should point up so that your tree has a nice pointy tip.
For the trunk of the tree, cut a strip of cardboard to the height you want your trunk, at least 1 inch high, so your tree can rest comfortably in the jar. I did mine about 1.5 in tall, and you can’t even see them through the snow. Roll the cardboard strip into a tube between 1/2 in and 3/4 inch in diameter with brown facing out. Glue it to secure it. Cut a little piece of cardboard into a circle a little bigger than the size of your trunk, so that it can cover either end of the tube. Glue the circles to the trunk. Once you have your trunk, glue it to the bottom of your tree.
Step 3: Decorate!
I suggest putting the tinsel on before the ornaments because it is easier to work the ornaments around the tinsel than the other way around.
For the tinsel, bend the pipe cleaners to make little loops about every inch or so. Take strands of pipe cleaners and attach them end to end to make one long strand of tinsel. You can twist them around each other, but I took small scrap pieces of the green pad and glued the pipe cleaners to those instead.
Twist the tinsel’s free end around the tree’s top point. Then, twist the tinsel around the tree as you go down. If you glued a little piece of the green pad to the pipe cleaners, glue it to the tree once you’ve twisted it around to that part. Continue twisting it down and around until you reach the end. You can either secure it by twisting the free end around one of the bottom branches or by gluing the little green pad part to the tree.
Now attach the ornaments! Put them in any old place, hanging from the bottom of the branches.
For the final touch, attach your tree topper.
Step 4: The Jar
Take the lid of your jar and cut a piece of cloth that can completely wrap the lid on both sides. Make sure the cloth gets tucked into the crannies of the inner edges and isn’t stretched over them, as you’ll need to be able to put the lid back on the jar. If your cloth is too thick, you may need to glue a circle on the interior and a circle on the exterior instead. Glue down the cloth with the edges on the inside.
Glue the tree trunk’s base to the jar lid’s center. Put your snow into the jar.
Lower your tree upside down into the jar. Secure the lid.
Tada!
Pirate Ferret.com 
They look so good! And surprisingly easy to make.
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