Personal Snow Globes

Personalized Snow Globes!

There's nothing like a snow globe to thrill young minds.  It's like magic!  Shake it up and the swirling snow flies all around.  Especially fun is to have a photo of yourself in the scene as if you were there!  This snow globe project was inspired by Sarah Jones and Kate Wells at Our Best Bites.  We included a photo of each child right in the globe to personalize the experience.  Above is one of my 8 students that participated in a January art workshop for 6-9 year olds, with her finished snow globe.  

We used Mason (canning) jars (which you can buy at any grocery store or Walmart) because I wanted all the jars to be the same size.  You could use glass jars from your recycle bin but I did not have enough of the same-size recycled jars for each of the 8 students.  The Mason jars were hard to see through because of the pattern on the glass.  I would recommend using recycled jars if you can gather enough for however many children you have. 

You may be wondering if a photo would hold up in water.  Good news!  If they are laminated well, they actually stand up for quite some time in water!

Here's how we made them.

1.  Take a photo of the child pretending to be standing in snow.  I asked each child, "What would you do if all of a sudden it started snowing?" 

2.  Print the photo on 4 X 6 photo paper.  Trim around the shape.

3.  Laminate.  Trim again around the shape.

4.  Use permanent glue dots (easy for a group of young students to use themselves) or hot -glue (if your student is younger and you wish to do the gluing.) You will want to glue the photo to a popsicle stick and then to the bottom of the jar lid.  Then add any miniature "props" you want - something you would also find in a snowy scene: a piece of a pine tree, a penguin, a red bird, a sled...

We made sure the laminated photo would fit into the jar.

Finally we added fake snow (we used Buffalo Snow brand from Michael's.  See photos below.)  Then we filled the jar with water.  Instead of Buffalo Snow, you could use glitter.  Slowly, we lowered the lid with photo and props into the water and tightly screwed on the lid.

 

Swirling snow and the pattern of the Mason jar made it more challenging to see inside the globe, but as the snow started to settle, there, peaking out of the glass was our little student!  Surprise!

Success!  Our snow globes were a big hit!  The children loved having their own photo in their snow globe.  What fun!

Have a blast making your own personalized snow globes!  Send us pictures of your finished globes so we can see them!

And don't forget to sign up to receive notice when the free download of "S is for Snow" is available!  

Love and blessings,
Laura

Laura Bird Miller, Artist/Art Instructor
http://www.laurabirdmiller.com