How to Paint Inside of Glass Ornament Balls

Craft Tip for Making Colorful Glass Ornaments

Here's a helpful arts and craft tip and technique describing how to paint inside of glass ornament balls. This technique will result in one solid color.

Remove the cap from the glass ball.

Squeeze or pour paint into the glass ball.

Move the ball around, rolling it until the inside is completely and evenly coated. Add more paint as necessary.

Set the ornament upside down on an empty container to let the excess paint drain out.

How to paint inside of glass ornament balls. Picture of painted ornament balls draining

The glass bulb needs to sit on the container without falling in.

For the 67mm ball and most larger balls, individual serving size pudding containers work well.

If bulb is too small to sit on the container without falling in, prop it up with folded paper or cardboard. This often is necessary for the 55mm size ball, as shown in the above photo. (See ball on the far left.)

How to paint inside of glass ornament balls. Picture of painted ornaments draining into bottles

Depending on what paint you use, you may be able to just set the glass ball on top of the paint bottle to drain for a while, then later move the bulb to an empty container to finish draining and drying.

Allow the paint to dry. This usually takes at least 24 hours, and perhaps several days.

I have read that using a hair dryer or punching a few holes in the sides of the container (to allow more air flow) helps speed up drying time. I haven’t tried either method yet myself.

Occasionally, when the paint is dry and I am all set to proceed working on an ornament, I will notice areas on the ball that are not completely and evenly covered with paint, even though they appeared to be when I first applied the paint. Fortunately this does not happen often. So what do you do?

If the particular ornament you are making will be partially covered with something (such as the beard on the Santa ornament), you may be able to get away with it and not have to add more paint.

If you do not have that option (or choose to "fix" the paint job anyway), then pour in more paint and repeat the process of rolling the ball around and letting it drain and dry again.

So now you know how to paint inside of glass ornament balls. I have found that knowing how to paint inside of glass ornament balls comes in mighty handy for many handmade ornaments!

Here are links to the ornaments that are painted on the inside:

Halloween Clown Ornament
Halloween Jack-o-Lantern Ornaments
Halloween Spider Ornament
Glass Santa Ornament
Frog Ornaments
Valentine Ornaments

For a complete "at a glance" listing of all the homemade ornaments featured on How To Arts and Crafts, with color photos and links to my pages showing you how to make them, please see Handmade Ornaments for All Occasions.

For more arts and crafts tips, please see the Craft Tip and Technique Page. Please also read these important Ornaments Safety Tips.

TOP - How to Paint Inside of Glass Ornament Balls
Arts and Crafts HOME Page | Arts and Crafts SiteMap