The following tutorial was written by 6-year-old Marian Grace. Marian has kept an art blog for the last year, and is currently focusing it on her crafty preparations for a bone marrow transplant she is having in late March. As she explains here, she is using the time while she waits to raise money for crafts for hospitalized children, since her own artwork is such an important part of her life. She will first earn money, by selling her snowglobe kits, to buy new craft supplies for her own long in-patient stay (necessary to ensure that they are germ-free, as her problematic immune system is being dismantled), then donating the rest of her money to Caitlin’s Smiles, a local organization that donates thousands of bags of craft supplies a month to kids in hospitals.

The following tutorial is written by Marian with added clarifying details in brackets written by her mother.

These are the supplies. All of them is gonna make it so cute.

{We were looking for re purposing uses for the little bottles that hold Marian’s daily growth hormone shots. We get 2 a week (one with the hormone, one with a sterile preservative diluent). I found that if I removed the labels and snipped the thin aluminum lids, I was left with a tiny glass bottle with a rubber stopper and so many possibilities… You may use another small bottle if you’re not so “lucky” to have medical supplies of your own all over your house.} [you can purchase these from jewelry supply shops such as these on etsy - ed]

The rectangle that is drawed is how skinny it is to fit inside, so you need to make something out of Sculpey to make it skinny enough to fit in the bottle. I made a beautiful wand and the handle is made out of wire and the top is made out of sculpey that is a yellow star and the the ribbons thread that is real thread, not one that is made out of sculpey.

You bake the Sculpey and you glue it in with a toothpick.

{We used E6000 silicon glue. Properly positioning the necessarily thin sculpture for gluing through the narrow jar opening is difficult. My best solution is to bake the sculpture with a little wire poked in the top, then holding onto that with tweezers. I’ve also used hot glue, but found that slow lowering + positioning before the glue cooled was almost impossible. The E6000 was much more user-friendly, though we waited 24 hours for it to dry.}

I wanted mine to just float so I didn’t glue it.

{I thought the little birds would float and look like they were flying. Briefly, maybe, but mostly they lie dead at the bottom of jar. Nice try.}

I added some water to it. We add the preservative for it to not get moldy, and the glycerin for the snowflakes to shake around like a snowglobe and for it to not fall too fast. And now you add the glitter. I used a syringe to put all the liquids in.

{Our first try got a weird white film after a week or so, and I read a suggestion to add waterbed conditioner. I couldn’t find any, so add 0.2 mL of the preservative diluent that comes with her growth hormone. Our snowglobes from 2 years ago are still clear. Also using 0.2 mL of the glycerin (I found it at CVS) was perfect. I added more to mine, and the glitter floats instead of slowly sinking.}

Now you wrap the copper tape around for it to look pretty and for the lid to not fall off.

{I bought the copper tape a few years ago at a stained glass supply store. You may also glue the lid, but gluing on slick glass is tricky. I advise scratching it up a bit with an emery board.}

And then you shake it for it to have a fun glycerin around your house.

About the authors: Marian Grace Goates is an up-and-coming artist who splits her time between first grade and crafting. She tracks her work on her blog, and is focusing on her new project superstar, to earn money for kids’ craft kits for hospitals as part of her own preparation for a bone marrow transplant in March. Valerie Goates is a crafting mom who loves to try new things, is currently passionate about wool, and always returns to clay. She sells her whimsical pottery and “other wee delights” in her etsy site purple petunia, and is trying to blog more too. The kits for this project can be purchased here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under home+children. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.