Do You Wanna Build a Snow Globe? ❄️

We’ve had some snow days here lately! Well, a different kind of snow day. The “white stuff” doesn’t come around often in Alabama, yet our household has had a snowy theme going on for the last several days. Last week, we went to see the Frozen movie (a homeschool perk–we waited until after the holidays, went to the 2:00 matinee, and literally had the entire theater to ourselves!) and this week we made snow globes!

We’d planned to make snow globes during December, but with so many other Christmas activities going on, I decided January would be the perfect month for a snowy project. I just googled “snow globes” and found these instructions from Better Homes and Gardens. Their supply list and instructions were very helpful. There were just a couple of troubleshooting areas that we had to experiment with, such as what amount of each “ingredient” to use, so I’m giving you our step-by-step here to kind of clear up what we had to figure out.

The figurine possibilities are endless: snowmen, cabins, wildlife, Christmas. If you can find miniature Frozen characters, that would be so cute! My kids mainly wanted dogs and deer.

Ok, so here goes!

Step 1: Click on the Better Homes and Gardens link for the supply list and assemble your supplies.

Step 2: Glue the two parts of the lid together along the rim, and then glue the Styrofoam halved-ball to the inside of the lid.

Step 3: Add glue to the Styrofoam and arrange the figurines on top. Aren’t mama and baby deer so sweet!!

You have to allow these to dry overnight, so we did these the night before and had them dry and waiting on us the next day.

Step 4: Fill the jar with distilled water. This was the tricky part because the website didn’t say how full to fill it. After some experimenting, we found that filling it to the first ring was about right.

Step 5: Add the glycerin. Again, the instructions didn’t say how much, only a few drops. We found that 5 drops was a good amount for larger jar, and 3 drops was a good amount for the 8 oz. jar.

Step 6: Add your glitter. We started with a small spoon of glitter, stirred it in to see how it swirled, and added more as needed.

Adding a little at the time was helpful because once it’s in there, it can’t come back out.

Step 7: Glue all around the rim again, and secure the top onto the jar.

We found that having the jar on plate was a good idea in case some water spills over a tad. If any water or glue does leaks out, just keep twisting the lid on until secure and tight, and then wipe the water and glue off the rim. If you have way too much water and it’s more than a leak, take the lid back off and take out some water a spoonful at a time.

Step 8: Brush Modge Podge on the outer lid ring.

Better Homes and Gardens did this as the step first since they used a spray adhesive, but it didn’t really matter for us because we used Modge Podge, which doesn’t get over-spray on the jar, and it worked just fine.

Step 9: Sprinkle the sticky ring with glitter.

Step 10: Leave your jars upside down for several hours to allow the lid glue and glitter to dry completely before turning right side up.

Now you have a wintry scene to enjoy, no matter how far south you live!!

Here’s what I’ll do differently next time:

1) I will use the exact brand of water-proof glue that BH&G recommended from Amazon. What I found at Hobby Lobby was waterproof, but melted the Styrofoam balls just a little, making it difficult to arrange our figurines.

2) I won’t use the dark green bottlebrush trees again. I couldn’t find the lighter, more natural ones that BH&G used, so we just settled on the dark ones. But after a few days, the water started to have a bit of a greenish tint to it. So DON’T get the same trees I got!

This was a very fun winter project! I hope this post will be helpful to you if you are wanting to try this. If you have any questions, let me know! And if you have that song in your head now, I’m sorry! But at least it’s a happy little tune!

🎶 “Do you wanna build a snowman!”❄️