How to make a snow globe from Mason Jars

Well… it really is about time that we a did a “How to make snowglobes” post, don’t you think? Every kids craft site worth its salt *needs* a snowglobe diy of sorts. A homemade snowglobe is a childhood must! And finally we have made some.

The best thing about your snowglobe, is that you get the chance to “use up” some of those plastic figurines that you may have lying around from Kinder Surprises or party bags… and if you don’t you could “whip” up some FIMO and make your own (if you want more  FIMO making ideas check out my friend’s great website! Including FIMO figurine snowglobes!).

I have also seen some cool LEGO snowglobes knocking about, so if your children can part with a bit of old LEGO, they do look great too. We did a mixture of “plastic figurine” and FIMO snowglobe. But in essence it is totally your call – how easy or complicated you make it!

We also made a crazy solar system snowglobe, it was very fiddly, I wouldn’t recommend it! Ha.

A few years later we made these:

(see the How To Make a Snow Globe video below!)

DIY SNOW GLOBE MATERIALS

• Old jars – personally I think the smaller the better, as then you are not left with “lots of watery space above your figurine”,
• a plastic figurine or FIMO,
• glycerine (the secret ingredient),
• glitter (apparently PVC glitter is better and I got mine from Zing Zing Tree – it is gorgeous),
• water,
• glue (we used a hot glue gun, but superglue should work too).
• Fishing wire for the planets and a plastic ring we found to suspend them from.

Note: Glycerine is not strictly speaking necessary, but apparently it makes the glitter more floaty. Mmmh.

Note 2: Now here is the interesting bit.. (I think). Though we really enjoyed the PROCESS of making the Solar System Snowglobe – i.e. Red Ted loved helping make all the different planets and it really got him talking about planets and solar systems, the Froggy snowglobe was just so quick and easy, that if I were to recommend one over the other, I would always say “Froggy”! The Solar System one, was such a terrible fiddle and even now, the planets still get a little tangled up, that the end result is no where near as satisfying as the frog one……. but then Red Ted did love learning about planets (it helped that we also made a Paper Mache Solar System – so we were in total space mode). Tricky!!!

How to make your DIY Snow Globe

Watch the video how to or follow the step instructions below!

1) Decide on what you would like to put in your snowglobe. Red Ted “allowed” me to use a plastic frog that came out a Kinder Egg…. I decided the frog would look better “elevated”, so we made  simple leaf for it to sit on. We have also had a great few FIMO  weeks here in Red Ted HQ and Red Ted has become an expert in ball rolling so we decided on a Solar System! Of course it is not to scale. Before baking the FIMO we poked holes into the balls, so that we could later glue some fishing wire in.

2) Superglue in your fishing wire and tie your planets to your plastic ring – this could be anything – ours came out of a pickled chillies jar! But you could cut a disc out a plastic lid or maybe even use  large button??? At this point, the craft actually looks pretty cool (we think).. suspended in the jar… well.. it’s fun, but not as pretty as the above!

3) Glue your solar system to the bottom of the jar (this was SOOOOO fiddly – and I used slow setting “hot glue” – if we made this again, I would suspend it from the LID of the jar. I couldn’t do it this time, as I made the fishing wires to short and all the planets would have been bunched up under the lid). The froggy on the other hand as a quick 2min job. Glue, place, stick… (see much easier)

4) Fill your jar with water, add a few drops of glycerine and then add glitter – maybe 1-2 teaspoons. Less is more! Believe me!!! We used white and blue glitter in the frog snowglobe and golden and star glitter in the solar system snowglobe.

5) Replace your lid. Screw just firmly. You may wish to glue it if you worry your kids will open it!

Tada:

What do you think? Fancy making a snowglobe yourself?

We also made a Snow Globe How To video (using a material called Sugru) take a look:

How to Make a Snow Globe on YouTube: