I once saw these amazing blown glass ornaments that looked like planets in our solar system, and maybe one day I will decide to splurge on something so exquisite, but in the meantime, I decided to make my own. I really like how they turned out!
I can (sort of) paint on canvas, so I thought painting on glass wouldn’t be a problem. Oh boy, was I wrong! While canvas provides a lot of grab for the paint, the glass was so slippery to paint on. The colors didn’t want to blur and it was all too easy to smear the paint right off, leaving a “window” in the glass. I think I got the hang of it towards the end, but it’s definitely more relaxing to paint on canvas.
Mercury
Mercury was pretty easy – it’s just a grey with some craters. It let me get my feet wet and practice a bit before the other planets. I added some white for more dimension.
Venus
Venus was really hard! I just could not get the colors quite right. It sort of got to look like Venus at the end, but it took a lot to get there. I mixed so many color combinations but nothing worked as well as I planned. There is yellow, brown, tan, red, and orange, swirled together.
Earth
Earth was fun! I painted the blue as a background first, then added the green continents (I wasn’t trying to make it super realistic with all the different variations of colors for the land), and splotched some white clouds on top. I probably could have done better with the clouds though.
Mars
It was really hard to add the details of Mars on the glass surface, so I ended up just approximating splotches of darker colors for Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons, and other areas. Most of it is reddish brown with some darker brown.
Jupiter
Jupiter was probably the coolest to make. The colors I wanted mixed well and it was fun to make the different layers of the turbulent atmosphere. And of course the Great Red Spot! This one had a lot tan, with some orange, white, brown, and red mixed in.
Saturn
I am not happy with how the rings turned out, but the planet itself was nice. The ring was made out of cardboard and painted the same way, with tan for the rings and black for the “distance” between them and the planet and other rings. It looks better in a darker setting. The planet itself has tan, yellow, and brown colors.
Uranus
Uranus was a bit challenging because I think the blue paint I had was a bit dry, so it wasn’t flowing smoothly across the glass like the others did, so it appears a bit blotchy. It’s a boring looking planets though, so it was just light blue.
Neptune
Neptune was a bit more fun then Uranus. It has some color variations where the storms are more visible. I used blue and dark blue.
Pluto
I couldn’t forget about Pluto, could I? It will always be a planet to me, no matter what anyone else says. The solar system is not complete without it. I was pretty lucky that the New Horizons mission to study Pluto and the Kuiper Belt objects took some amazing pictures of Pluto a few years ago, so I had some great reference to use for the painting. It was still a bit difficult to get a sense of where all the features were in relation to one another, but it came out pretty well. I used grey, tan, and brown for Pluto.
So there you have it! This was my favorite ornament making project and they are a great addition to our Christmas tree.
