 Hello friends, welcome back to my channel, Drew here from Lone Fox, and today is my first holiday video of the season. I am so excited and I figure we'd kick it off with a little bit of DIY because I did want to prep all of these ornaments for my holiday decorating video, which is going to be coming up very, very soon for you guys. And as some of you guys might have seen, I already did a little bit of holiday shopping this year, so I did a vlog last week, I believe, and you can go ahead and watch that. I'll put it in a card up here or in the description box below where I went and shopped for a bunch of stuff. But I knew I wanted to DIY some ornaments and that's what we're doing today, you guys. And oh my gosh, look at these ornaments. I'm giving you like a sneak peek, which I never do. These are from the Target Dollar Spot and they look like this. Like I got six of these for $3 and I made them look like that. Like I'm, oh my gosh, like they're so cute, you guys. I hope you can see that. Of course, you're going to get a better look at them, you know, when I actually do share them. I'm just very proud of those ornaments and those are just a couple of the ones that I'm sharing in today's video. There's a lot of techniques, a lot of really cool new products I've found that I've used for distressing. There is a whole bunch in today's video. But before hopping in, I do just want to go ahead and mention two really great Black Friday sales for you guys. One of my most requested discount codes is for Desenio. I get comments, emails, direct messages. Everyone is always asking me if I have an ongoing coupon code with Desenio, which I do not, but they actually gave me a really insane Black Friday code for you guys. So check the description box below. It's going to be right at the top there for Desenio because I know that you guys love their prints. I love their prints as well. This is our best sell of the year, so I definitely suggest taking advantage of it. It is literally so much percent off. Like I'll put it in the description box. I'll put it on the screen for you guys to take a look at, but definitely take advantage of Desenio's Black Friday sale. And the second sale I wanted to mention is just my very own sale. I'm having a Black Friday sale over on Lone Fox. Everything on the entire store is 20% off up to Cyber Monday. So from today all the way until Cyber Monday, just use code givethanks at checkout and you get 20% off of your entire order. And the US orders over $75 ship for free, which is amazing. So definitely take advantage of that you guys. But let's go ahead and dive on into these DIY ornaments because we're getting artistic in today's video. So I just edited this whole video and you guys, you are not even ready for these DIY ornaments. I'm so excited. So these first ones here are some antique brass bells, but antique brass bells are really popular. However, when you find them online, they are so expensive. So I found these silver bell ornaments at Target. They were just $3 a piece, just in like the Wonder Shop section. And what I started off by doing was grabbing some Rub-n-Buff. I'm using both antique brass and gold leaf and I'm going to go ahead and just paint that onto the exterior of our belts. Pretty self-explanatory. If you guys have ever used Rub-n-Buff before, it's essentially like a waxy paint and I'm just applying it onto the outside of this. I'll link below both of those products for you guys. I also ended up switching over to a foam brush as I feel like it applied it a lot more evenly on the surface. The paintbrush can kind of scratch it off a little bit. So the foam brush worked really well and then I used a paintbrush for little smaller straight sections. Now this is where the magic happens. What you're looking at here is called alcohol ink. I'll link these below for you guys but these bring me back to my scrapbooking days because I used to use these in scrapbook projects all the time and I've had them in my stash for probably 10 years or so. They're still available on the market. I'm using the colors Ginger and Caramel but essentially they are alcohol-based inks and what you can do with them is they dry down extremely quickly but they're also translucent and you could build them up which I love. So it's really nice to be able to create an antique look on anything using a product like this which I've never thought to use but I was going through my paint stash and I was like, oh my gosh, let's try to create an antique look with this and it worked perfectly. So all I essentially did was I dipped my foam brush into the kind of concentrated ink. This is the before and after the left is the before, right is after. So I dipped my brush into that ink and just kind of pounced it on the surface randomly, let it dry down for like a second and then I went in with the side of that brush and blended it out but as you can see for this one here I left the stain pretty apparent because the more you layer and the more you build it up the darker the color gets and the more concentrated the staining or antiquing looks and to give the metal a really oxidized look I used this burnished amber spray paint. It is my favorite spray paint right now. I'll link it below as well for you guys. I just went ahead and firstly went in with a cloth thinking that I could just kind of swipe it on the surface but I actually found using your finger worked so much better. I then tried going in with a foam brush again. That didn't work that well either. Then I went in with my finger and was like, yes, this is perfect. So I literally just sprayed this into a little container, dipped my finger right into the spray paint and applied it on to the surface there, kind of smoothing it out and just making sure that it spreads nicely. You can see the difference in the right and the left. I really think this just kind of settles down in the cracks in the grooves and gives it that overall like antique tarnished look and that is what I kind of did for all of my antique brass bells. So after I made the antique brass bells I was like, let's create a few bubbles. So what I'm using for all of my Christmas ornaments are actually these six count plastic shatterproof bubbles from Target's Dollar Spot. They are just $3 for a pack of six. They come in a circle and this kind of little light bulb shape and all I'm doing is popping out the top. So as you can imagine, they're created from plastic but that's great because we're gonna be able to use them for years and years to come and they're pretty cost effective. So then I was trying to figure out the easiest way to paint these and I thought, why not grab some skewers from the Dollar Tree, stick the skewer in the ornament, tape it on there and then it's basically a paintable lollipop and that is what I did for all of my ornaments because I felt like it would be so much easier to have a stick to hold onto that you're not getting paint all over your hand. So I did this to all of my ornaments just simply slipped a skewer in there and taped the ornament onto the skewer. To create the antique brass ornament, I just went in with a coat of Rub and Buff onto the entire ornament there and then of course we have to get that antique look with the alcohol ink. So I went in with ginger first, I applied a droplet onto our ornament and just blended it out like so and I just continued that process until I had as many layers as I liked and it looked really antiqued in like an actual metal ornament. After that I did go in with a little bit more of that burnished amber spray paint as well and just apply that to the surface to kind of give it that oxidized look like we did it for the bell ornaments and that is how I finished off these antique brass bobbles. Really simple and easy but honestly they look like real metal and they're beautiful. And next on our list are some distressed ornaments. I love these so much and the first thing I actually did to all of these ornaments was I went in with a Zinzer primer. This is basically just a primer you can get it at Lowe's, any hardware store. It is basically made to adhere anything to pretty much anything. So it's just gonna make sure ornaments stay nice and stuck. I'll link below the product I ended up using but I know that it comes in a spray paint form as well which is probably a lot easier than what I used but that's all I had on hand. So I primed my ornaments, let them dry. Now what I'm doing is going in with a shade of paint. So I'm doing one shade of paint and adding a little bit of white to the shade as well to essentially create two different shades of that same paint and I'm just gonna stipple onto my ornament both of those shades. So starting off with the dark, mixing in the light there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to this at all. We are basically just gonna want to slowly blend and kind of gradient the two colors together to create almost a tonal distressed look and it's so simple and easy. There really is no rhyme or reason to this at all. Now this is one of those more light bulb shaped ornaments. I did the same color way for this one as well and I thought I'd also mix in just a little bit of gold stamping a bit of that gold on top of the surface and just kind of letting it blend in with those acrylic paint colors as well but do keep in mind guys you can let these dry down and you can go in with a second coat as well if you really want those to have like a full on distressed look but how about we take these to the next level because I was loving them as is but then I was like, why don't we add a little bit of alcohol ink to this and see what happens and it was just the perfect addition. I just love how the alcohol ink is transparent so it layers over the top of the texture you've already created but it gives an aged look at the same time almost like a stained effect which I really love. Now this ornament here using same exact techniques just a different color way to show you guys kind of a different color option. So this one I went in with a traditional kind of Christmas red color and then I also added black to the red to create more of a darker burgundy which I then used to offset our lighter red and then I also of course went in with a little bit of that alcohol ink just to give again a stained effect to this piece and just a tiny bit of gold just to add that holiday shimmer. Now I opted for a bunch of darker colors this holiday season for my tree but I do think these ornaments would look so pretty in lighter shades like if you did like some frosty grays or like some light blues or sages I think those would also be so pretty if you mixed again in some of that gold. This one here is black and brown which I thought also was great. So then I thought to myself what if we put the alcohol ink right on top of the ornament like right on top of the primer and you guys I was shook when it came out. I loved what this one turned out. It looks like a melky amberglass bobble or something. I don't even know it looks so, so pretty and the great thing is that when you use alcohol ink this is a really great representation as you apply more on top it actually reacts with itself and it picks up the color and kind of puddles it in different areas. So you can create a lot of really unique texture with this product which I really like and I feel like it needs to be introduced more in DIY. And this sounds totally sponsored but I swear you guys I've had these for legit 10 years and just found them in my stash and whipped them out and used them. But then I was thinking tortoise shell ornaments if we apply the alcohol ink right on top of a clear glass or a shadow proof ornament like this one it would create almost a tortoise effect. So that's what I wanted to go for I first started by applying on the caramel color and then I added a little bit of ginger. Now I wish I did have a cool brown as well because I really do think a darker cool brown would give you more of that effect but look how beautiful this is. I love how you can see through both layers of the glass or the plastic I guess and it just creates a really unique ornament. I figured some of the other ornaments were more on the complex side so these ones I'm keeping super simple we're going right in with that hammered burnish amber spray paint. It is my favorite can of spray paint currently I'm obsessed with it. Look how pretty the color of it is it's like a chocolate brown with the slightest bit of like dull shimmer but it also gives you a hammered metal effect as well it is just truly perfect and I also applied a little bit of that burnish amber spray paint to my red ornaments they were just a little bit too vibrant for me so I went ahead and I applied it to the top and bottom which I think again adds visual interest to your ornament and it also gives it a little bit of a hammered metal effect like it has like a two tone look and I also applied it to that tortoise one. And our last step is going to be to customize the metal toppers so they match our ornaments a bit better so I placed these into a cardboard box and I went over the top of them with a gold spray paint. If you have an antique brass I think that would look a lot better I just had what I had on hand which was a shiny gold spray paint so once I sprayed that on I went in again with burnish amber just kind of giving a light coat over the top just to give a little bit of a distressed look and then I went in again with alcohol ink and just added a droplet of alcohol ink to each of those metal toppers went in with a foam brush just to kind of blend it a little bit and then hit it one more time with that burnish amber spray paint and they look like antique metal toppers that are ready to be added to our ornaments. So all you have to do to add these to the ornaments is simply just kind of press in the two prongs on the inside there and slip it in and you are good to go. Can you believe that these started off as clear ornaments and we turn them into like such a fun medley of distressed oxidized tortoise, brassy, metallic unique ornaments and these antique brass bells are truly to die for I cannot wait for you guys to see these on my tree in my Christmas apartment makeover coming out this weekend. And those are my ornaments for this year I hope that you guys love them and I am just so excited to pair them with the ones that I actually purchased in my vlog because the ones I purchased were a little bit larger and I love that these ones are on the smaller side because my tree is a bit smaller this year. You guys are gonna of course see it when I do my video on decorating my space but I needed some smaller ornaments so I just went ahead and DIY these ones and I love them like the tortoise one also like this one was so easy but it's so cute I love it so much. I just said so like 64 times. Anyways, I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your day. Don't forget to take advantage of both of those Black Friday sales, the one for Desenio which I'll put in the description box below and the one on longfox.com at 20% off of your entire order using code givethanks at checkout. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you enjoyed today's video and I'll see you in the next one. Bye guys.