merry thriftmas: glitter animals

I know Christmas is seriously right around the corner, but I love this tutorial by Colleen from Paisley Boulevard so much that I had to share.  This is a perfect project to do with kids, friends.. etc.  It would be so fun to make these for any time of year, since little toy animals and glitter are appropriate all year long.  Obviously.

I thrift a LOT, because I find that sometimes there are more charms in the things that people toss than a dollar clearance at Target. I saw this bag of animals on the toy shelf the other day and they almost jumped into my arms. There are SO many things you can do with plastic toys, and toy animals are the mother load. I knew for $3.00 I could make this bag look like a lot more.

 

I took all of these plastic animal toys and spray painted them a pretty metallic rose gold color. (2 coats to make sure I could flip them a bit.) Once they dried, I used a hot needle to poke through the plastic backs and inserted eyelets that I had on hand for jewelry making. After that I just hand-painted Mod Podge where I wanted to and coated them in champagne colored glitter. A pretty silver cord made super simple tree ornaments that you'd never imagine where a discarded toy!

   

If you don't have the eyelets, you can easily coat your critters and display them on a shelf. My little guys are hanging on the tree and a few will also be accenting gift tags on the gifts that we give this season! Thanks so much for having me Heather! Merry Christmas everyone. xo, Colleen blog/twitter/fb