When we unpacked our holiday stuff a couple weeks ago, one of the things I was most excited about was a snow globe I bought for Lou when she was a baby. Snow globes really do seem to enchant kids, and Lou just warmed right up to it, cuddling it and staring at it and generally loving it.
Until it slipped out of her hands and broke on the floor. Tears were shed.
I thought about just buying a new one, but where's the fun in that? The silver lining was a Christmasy project Lou and I could do together. So I gathered my materials.
Clearly, plastic containers were in order, so I started by finishing off my almond butter. Then I rounded up an old nut container we'd already "upcycled" for treats, and used the Goo Gone to remove all the (rather excessive) glue points on both. Lou and I headed to the toy store to pick out some plastic figurines to get snowed on. How cute are all the little antarctic animals? So cute. The Martha Stewart glitter pack, from the Paper Source, was no bargain, but it was really cool - there are diamond and star shaped glitter choices, which we thought would be fun. The glycerine is to make the water a bit more viscous and slow the settling of the snow, and the super glue is to stick the animals to their lids.
Armed with all those goodies, which added up to many times the cost of a darn pre-made snow globe, we headed home and began the construction process. It turns out that it wasn't that kid-friendly of a project. The first steps involved Goo Gone, super glue, hot glue and finely applied craft glue, none of which Lou could help with. Once I'd glued the figurines onto their respective lids, I used a cheap paint brush to paint craft glue around the animals and sprinkled glitter around them, trying to create snow drifts. Like so:
Ahh, so cute, right? Then, finally, a part Lou could play.
Adding glitter to anything is fun. And with only one major spill, I'd say we did pretty well. I added my glycerine before she started so I could judge whether there was enough. I put about a teaspoon into the cup and a half or so of water and it worked really well. The glitter floated gently down. This project was going great! I screwed the lid onto the jar, turned it over and voila:
Um, we ended up with the Beijing Zoo. Small, cramped, leaky and smoggy.
Not the winter wonderland I was hoping for. To stop the leak, I drew a bead of hot glue around the jar, but that was ill-planned. The lid immediately stuck, and couldn't be fully screwed it. Obviously. This successfully did not solve the leak, and made it so that the jar didn't sit evenly on the table. Oh, and left an ugly line of glue around the bottom. Then the baby penguins fell of the bottom and floated macabrely around.
It was not our finest DIY hour. To be fair, the expert I consulted before starting this project - the INTERNET - did not give a hint that not all jars are watertight. It also failed to warn that silver glitter could make water seem so gross. I suppose it could have been something else - the paint on the animals? - but the silver glitter seems like the most likely candidate for that grayish cast.
Not sure what else to do, I (veeeeery safely) stabbed some slits in the jar and let the water drain out. I learned from the hot glue to the lid mistake and avoided it on jar number 2, but since that also wasn't water proof, I poured out the liquid and was left with two glittered jars, wondering if I could salvage the absurdedly expensive animals. Then Lou gazed at them in rapture and said, "We did it Mommy!"
Yep. That dry snow globe is mesmerizing.
The glitter that's stuck to the inside of the jar seems to be magical enough for Lou. There's a moral in here somewhere guys. Feel free to speculate on what it is. Thanks for reading! We'll see ya tomorrow.