Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Photo Glass Ornament DIY



I have been giving these for Christmas for years!

Supplies:

Glass ornament
Transparency printable paper (make sure it is ink jet if that is the type of printer you have)
Printer
Circle cutter or scissors
Pencil

Instructions:

If you do not know the diameter of your ornament, you can find it by measuring its circumference and dividing it by pi (3.14).

Choose a picture for your ornament and make sure the size fits the diameter of your ornament. What this means is that the subject needs to be centered so that the entire circle fits in the picture. You might have to enlarge or shrink the photo. I used to make these on a word document a long time ago by inserting an image on to my document and creating a circle the size of the circumference of the ornament. I would play with the size of the photo until it fit right in that circle. I then, deleted the circle I had drawn and hit the print button. I could fit up to 6 pictures on one sheet. The next step was just to manually cut each circle with the fiskars circle cutter. This part was a bit tricky and I sometimes had to start all over again. Figuring out where to position the cutter was a real headache! Having a silhouette cameo has been a time and life saver.

 
The picture on the left needs to be resized to fit the circle, the one on the right was perfect so I went ahead and used the intersect tool on the silhouette cameo to make anything outside the circle disapear.  There is no need to waist ink! 
All my pictures are now ready, I centered them to the page and inserted the registration marks for cutting. It is now ready to be printed

I like printing on transparency that way the photo can be seen on both sides of the ornament. Always print on the rougher side of the transparency.



Cut the picture using a fiskars circle cutter, your silhouette cameo or simply your scissors if you have steady hands. Mine are now cut with the help of my silhouette cameo. If you cut to photo too small it might roll around once in the ornament. If you cut it too big, it will bend a bit inside and won't look so good.

Roll the picture around a pencil

Insert the pencil in the ornament

Release the photo. At this point, you might have to adjust the picture around with tweezers. I always make sure I roll the photo around the pencil the way I want it to face in the ornament to avoid this type of tweaking.

Add the ornament cover and voila!


It can't get any simpler than this!

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