Babyfood Jar Snow Globes

Owen was fascinated recently with the snow globes on display with the Christmas things at the mall. Instead of spending $$$ on the ones we saw, we picked up about $7 worth of supplies and put some Freecycled baby food jars to good use.
Here's what we used:
baby food jars with lids (Freecycled)
polymer clay (5 for $5 at Joanne's Fabrics this week!)
iridescent glitter ($2 at Joanne's)
paint (from another project)
toothpicks (on hand)
wine corks (used and saved, on hand)
water (free with the rent)
glycerin (leftover from another project, bubbles)
vinegar (on hand)


We all enjoyed making little things to put into our snow globes. After we were done sculpting trees, gnomes, a snowman and some critters, we baked them for half a hour.

I painted the lids with some silver paint we had on hand, and they dried overnight.
I cut some wine corks to make little pedestals about the height of the lid. (Actually, if I'd thought of it when we were making the figures, we could have done this with the clay.)
Owen and I arranged the figures the way we wanted them. Then we glued the corks to the lids, and the figures to the corks with superglue (Am I crazy or what?).
Here they are all lined up - a Christmas tree with a squirrel, a gnome with a bird, a snowman, and a tree with a bunny.
I filled the jars with water I had boiled and cooled and left just a little space at the top.
I added 3 drops of glycerin to each jar.

Owen added 1t. vinegarand 1/2t. glitter to each jar,
and then we screwed the lids on tight (and a little water came out of each one).
Owen seemed to like them even more than the fancy, $$$ ones at the mall, and we had a fun time making them to boot!