Cool Marble Paint Pour Christmas Ornament: DIY

Every Christmas season, I love to kick off my holiday decorating with a fun paint project. Whether I’m refreshing my old Christmas decor or trying a new paint technique, I just love to play with paint during the holidays. Today, I wanted to share with you guys a fun (and addicting) cool marble paint pour Christmas ornament DIY project that’s the perfect craft project for a holiday girls night party or just fun to do with your family. The best part is that these ornaments are absolutely gorgeous and look like you spent a fortune on them!

Today, I am also teaming up with Testors paints, which are my favorite craft/decor paints that have used for more than 20 years! I discovered Testors more than 20 years ago when I was looking for the best glass/ceramic paints and I have been obsessed with all of the Testors paint products since then because trust me, no other product even comes close to comparing when it comes to the finish.

For today’s project, I’m using the Testors Craft acrylic paints and Testors Craft Marbling Medium that I mix with the paints to get a gorgeous marbling effect.

 

So let’s jump into this fun project!

Last year, some of you guys may remember that I shared a marble/stone paint ornament project, where I swirled paint inside round ball ornaments.  They turned out so beautiful!

While I could have stopped there, but I wanted to see more a more pronounced marbling look that you just can’t get 100% on the inside of the ornament.  I decided that I wanted to try this look on the outside of the ornament (instead of the inside) because the paint dries so much faster on the outside, which preserves the marbling lines better than inside the ornament.   I  mixed Testors Craft marbling medium with the Testors Craft acrylic paints using a pour technique over the outside of the ornament and I fell in LOVE with the beautiful marbling combinations, matte finish and color mix of melding that comes with this technique!

I tried this technique on both clear glass and plastic ornaments and it worked beautifully on both.  Of course, this technique also looks pretty poured on the inside but the faster the paint can dry, the more defined your marbling lines are.

When I started playing with this technique, I couldn’t believe the gorgeous results I was getting! There are endless color possibilities and no two ornaments turn out the same. While I prefer the ultra-matte finish for this look, if I wanted a high gloss look, I could spray the dried ornaments with a clear gloss top coat.

If you want to try out this fun project, I walk you through each step below:

Cool Marble Paint Pour Christmas Ornament DIY

*Video tutorial at the end of instructions

Supplies:

Testors Craft Acrylic Paints (You can find at your local craft store, Walmart or online here)
Testors Craft Marbling Medium (You can find at your local craft store, Walmart or online here)
Newspaper or poster board
Clear glass or plastic ornament ball
Styrofoam block (I used a 12″ x 2″ block)
Plastic kitchen wrap (To wrap styrofoam block)
3-4 Wood dowels (I used 3/8th thick dowels)
Wood kitchen skewers
Small Dixie Cups

Step #1 Lay down either newspaper or poster board for your work area and then cover your styrofoam block with kitchen plastic wrap (this allows you to remove the wrap after the dripped paint dries and you can re-use your block).

Next, spread out and insert your wood dowels in block securely like this below ( you can actually fit 4 onto the block spread out enough so ornaments don’t touch):

 

Step #2 Choose which colors you want to marble and begin by pouring each color into its own small cup and mix in equal parts Testors Craft Marbling Medium to each paint. Stir paint/marbling mix with the flat side of a wooden skewer. It’s very important that you separately mix colors with marbling medium BEFORE you mix different paint colors together.

Step #3 Testors recommends mixing equal amounts of one paint color and the marbling medium together and pouring the mixture one color at a time on your ornament, to achieve a crisp separation of colors. For my ornaments, I premixed each color with the marbling medium and then mixed all of the colors together and poured them from a small cup. To give you an idea, the small cup will need to be filled at least half way to completely cover one ornament. Once you pour all your colors into cup, very gently swirl the colors together with the pointy tip of your skewer.

Step #4 Once all of your colors are marbled the way you want in your cup, you’re ready to begin pouring by gently starting at the top of the ornament and circling the ornament and moving downward and gently pouring until you get to the bottom.  Think about the motion like soft-serve ice cream but as you come around, you will work your way down, You will have a couple spots at the bottom that do not get covered by paint and simply take a wood skewer and get some excess paint that dripped of the ornament and roll the skewer sideways over the spots that didn’t cover.

Step#5 Once you have completely covered your ornament with paint, you will need to let the ornaments dry on the dowel overnight for it to harden. You can move it after an hour or so and hang it to finish drying elsewhere if you are wanting to pour more ornaments but it will need to dry without touching anything for at least 8 hours.

Step #6 A top coat is not needed with these paints because after a full day, the paint hardens and won’t scratch off. Once the ornament is dry, you are ready to insert the metal ornament hanger and hang on the tree.

I did a video to show you the technique in action below:

There are so many endless color possibilities and I can’t tell you just how fun it is to make these. It’s really interesting to play with the technique and like you saw in the video, I poured solid color over solid color and it’s so cool to see what happens.  I hope you guys try this process because it’s just so fun!!

I’ve shared a lot of fun holiday paint projects over the years and you’re looking for more ideas, click on the links below to go to my project tutorial.

Marble/stone pour inside ornament technique:

 

Antelope/animal print ornaments:

Refreshing old Christmas decor with paint:

A big thank you to Testors for partnering with me today on this fun project!

Cheers!

Cyndy