Jellyfish Tree Ornament From Plastic Packaging and a Balloon

Thea
by Thea
2 Materials
$1
20 Minutes
Medium

Recycle ping-pong ball packaging into summer beach holiday Christmas ornaments

Christmas decorations in this part of the world are a bit of a problem since we are in the middle of our summer beach holidays and it is often blisteringly hot. Fake holly and plastic snowmen just seem so wrong when you are wearing flip-flops!


In a quest to be more authentic but without taking the archetypal BLING out of Christmas, I brainstormed some beach-type tree decorations. Our tree at the beach apartment is a white painted wooden stick construction and the ornaments are designed to match.

I started with the plastic blisterpack from a set of ping-pong balls and cut out the cups.

Then they had to be painted. After experimenting with different paints I found that gold nail varnish gave the best coverage, had the best brush and required the least amount of general effort.


I painted them gold on the concave side which meant that they would have an extra gloss layer as seen through the plastic. I found it helped to stick the cups down to the table with a blob of Prestick to prevent them from moving during the painting.

Whilst waiting for the cups to dry, I started halving a couple of balloons. You can also cut a horizontal line through the bottom of the balloon to square it off a bit. I found that this made it easier for me to keep my bearings when it came to cutting the tentacles. This was done by cutting 8 vertical strips in each half. I also rounded off the bottom of the tentacles to make them more realistic.

2 halves + horizontal line at the bottom


Then cut into 8 strips

Next I made a hole in the centre of each of the cups. The easiest way is to heat a pin or in this case, a metal earring fitting over a candle and then simply poke a hole through.

Next, I threaded an earring fixture through the hole and bent it into a loop using the pliers shown below. Having never made jewelry before I was reluctant to buy the 2 pliers suggested at the bead shop. Luckily I followed the advice because it made the job much easier. I suppose you could also use tweezers. The image also shows the jump ring that I then attached to the top op the earring wire.

I then threaded the balloon through the loop, tied it with a knot and cut off the thick rim.


Next I opened up the loop slightly and hooked a little strand of pearls to the wire. Luckily my strand happened to be a double so it was very easy to do this. If it it hadn’t been I would probably have used a glue gun to stick the beads to the wire.

With the beads secured, I made the existing loop a little smaller and ensured that it was closed so that the balloon and beads did not come loose. I also fiddled around until the wire hung nicely ie that the hanging bits hung vertically and that the gold body was nicely balanced over them. Finally I attached a satin ribbon to the jump ring from which to hang the ornament.

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  • Patty Patty on Nov 21, 2019

    Why isn't there a picture if the finished product? It looks like it would be really cute.

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  • Dianna Rea Dianna Rea on Nov 13, 2020

    Jellyfish wouldn’t be my first thought for inspiration for a tree ornament, but it’s super cute! Funny - dining room my chandelier reminds me of a jellyfish - maybe I need to take the theme to the tree!! Thank you for sharing!

    • Thea Thea on Nov 13, 2020

      We have our summer holidays and are at the beach. So I guess it makes more sense here😅.

  • Dl.5660408 Dl.5660408 on Nov 13, 2020

    Love it! And it wouldn’t have to be strictly for Christmas!

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