Artline Monday - Make A Gift Day

Today is Make A Gift Day so it's the perfect time to share another Christmas craft with you!  This time I am making a festive snow scene for my neighbour's daughter who is obsessed with dinosaurs but you can pop whatever you like inside yours and the method will be the same.

Gathering my supplies

For this craft you will need:

• A clean empty jar with a lid
• Some fake snow or white or silver glitter
• Items to create your scene like small toys, pine cones or Christmas decorations
• Artline 900XF metallic pens
• A white Artline poster marker
• A piece of foam or a small sponge

I found this dinosaur in the bottom of a toy box in my children's room, he looked a little worn and unloved so I transformed him with my metallic silver Artline 900XF marker and now he looks much better!

Colouring in the dinosaur toy

I wanted to make my pine cone look a little special too so I added some gold highlights to the tips of it.

Adding gold highlights

Unless you want to be covered in marker it is a good idea to set anything you have coloured in to one side and leave them to dry for a while.

Waiting for the ink to dry

While they were drying I used the lid to draw a circle on my sponge so it would be roughly the same size as the mouth of my jar.  The sponge is going to raise my scene so it will be higher up in the jar than if I just glued everything directly to the bottom of the lid.

Drawing around the jar lid

Then I cut out my circle and painted the top of it white with the Artline poster marker so it would look a little snowy.

Painting the sponge

I used super glue to stick the sponge to the inside of the lid....

Gluing the sponge inside the lid

.... and then glued the tree, pine cone and silver dinosaur on top of the sponge.

Glue your items to the sponge to create your scene

I added some fake snow inside the jar, the amount you can see in this photo was too much so I had to take about half of it back out!

Add your fake snow, you'll need less than you think

Once the glue had dried and my figures were secure and in place I screwed the lid back onto the jar.

Screw the lid onto the jar

Flip the jar over and you have your snowy scene!

The finished snow scene

You can make these scenes with any size jar, from tiny mini ones to huge ones!  You just need to make sure whatever you glue to the lid will fit inside the jar and through the mouth of it before you start.  

If you wanted to make them into traditional snow globes you would just need to add some water and a spoon of glycerine to help the glitter float around.  You should also glue the lid shut so no one could open the jar again once it had been filled. 

Now I know how well the Artline 900XF metallic pens work on such odd surfaces I keep thinking of all the things I could use them on to make more Christmas decorations!  If I find anymore small forgotten toys I just might colour them in too, thread them with some ribbon and hang them on my tree!