A Floating Ornament is easy to make but designing them must follow certain rules. In this tutorial I first give you six of my designs. Then I will teach you the rules so that you can design your own.
These floating ornaments do not photograph well but once you make them they are beautiful. They take some special equipment to make (like printable transparencies) but are well worth it. If you want to see the other ornaments for Ornament Week, click here.
What you will need
- Printable transparencies
- 2.65 inch glass or plastic ornaments
- tweezers
- printer
- Download File
Printing and Cutting
With my file and printable transparencies, these are really simple. They all print on one page. The Cricut will cut around the circle and I designed them to fit into 2.65 in ornaments.
If you use another size ornament just take the outside measurement (it should be on the box) and subtract a little for the with of the glass. For the 2.65 inch ornaments I had to cut the circle to 2.5 inches. You may have to trial them to make sure they fit properly. You can do this with copy paper so you don’t waste your transparencies.
Assembly
Then insert it through the top hole. The transparencies will unfold themselves one inside. If they are off center or sideways adjust them with the tweezers or a probe. Put the top back on your ornaments carefully so as not to break the glass.
And your Floating Ornaments are done.
Designing your own Ornaments
I know everyone does not have a family member named Ella. You can change that name to anything you want obviously. You may have an Idea for another design too. There are a few rules to follow when designing a floating ornament and they have mostly to do with color.
Use Bold Colors
First of all, bold colors show up better. You can see this in most of my examples. Red, Black and Dark Blue are good. Anything you make white will not print, but you can use this too. The moose ornament uses this and makes up for the use of not so bold colors. The tree ornament uses the dark blue circles with the white middle to make the tree stand out without overpowering it.
Writing and Small Details
Writing needs to be bold and works better the bigger you make it. Small details don’t show up well. The star ornament actually started with the star being two different colors but that didn’t work well.
My Trials
Some colors show up better than others and some color combinations just work better. Here are some examples of my trials:
As I said earlier the star just worked better all the same color and the last design is the one I used because the colors contrasted nicely.
The tree ornament worked best with the dark green tree and the darker colored presents. The star worked better with an orange star than with a yellow one. And I don’t have a picture without the blue rings but take my word for it they helped the tree and the star stand out.
I hope this makes it easier for you to design your own floating ornaments. I would love to see what you have done. Post pictures in the comments or on my Facebook Group.