Kiwi Company occasionally puts out special holiday-themed crates, and we’ve been holding on to this one since last December! Reading the title on the box, I imagined the final product would be ornaments with beautiful swirls. Little did we know the method to make the ornaments was swirly, too!

Travis was so excited seeing the three plastic globe ornaments, since we had just set up our tree. Add two of the provided watercolors (in primary colors) to each globe for a quick lesson in color mixing. You’ll be able to make one orange, one green, and one purple ornament. Next squirt in a drop of the glittery silver paint.

Add a marble, and get swirling! As you swirl, the marble will help the paint coat the entire globe.

As a parental aside, this was very precarious proposition with a four-year-old. Of all the Koala projects we’ve ever done, this was by far the messiest! It was quite hard for Travis to swirl enough to coat the inside of the ornament without also spilling paint, so step in if you need to.

He loved the drying method that came next though; upend the ornament over a provided paper cup. The marble and any excess paint will fall out.

We set ours aside to dry for about an hour.

Ideally, flip the ornaments at this point and allow to dry on the inside, too, overnight. Travis was too impatient though and wanted to pop in the provided corks and seal them up!

To finish each ornament, we wrapped a sparkly pipe cleaner around the neck.

Add a silver ribbon (a great chance to practice tying a bow), then thread a provided bell onto the pipe cleaner. Hook the end.

Now it’s ready to hang on your tree!

The kit also suggested gifting the ornaments (just slip on a gift tag and it’s ready to go)…

…or attaching one to your stocking as a sparkly decoration.

Let the holiday season begin!