sparkly glitter dinosaur christmas ornaments from dollar store

I’m not sure what triggered it, but a few days after my son received some small dinosaurs at a birthday party I knew I wanted to douse them in glitter. I casually brought it up one day while he was playing with them. To my surprise, he enthusiastically said “Yes!” after I asked if he wanted to go have craft time with Mommy to make his dinosaurs sparkly.

A few days later, I felt guilty for glittering his dinos so bought him a new bag at the dollar store. When I gave it to him, his eyes lit up and he exclaimed, “Now we can go put glitter on them!” I guess I’m not such a horrible mom after all! I let him help me match the dinosaurs to the color of glitter he thought we should use and made him a set of sparkly dino ornaments that he loves.

Project estimate:

  • Small dinosaurs, bag of 8 for $1
  • Small eye hooks, bag of 8 for about $1
  • White glue, on hand
  • Glitter, on hand or $1 and up
  • Ribbon or ornament hangers, on hand or $1

Total: $2 and up

The fine glitter (in the stack on the left) came from the $1 section of Michaels. The four bottles of chunky glitter on the right came as a set at Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree and Michaels also carry “glitter samplers” which are multiple small bags of glitter on a card for about $1. The glitter samplers are a great way to acquire several colors of glitter at once without having to buy full size jars.

glitter dinosaur ornaments supplies glitter hooks dinos

Step 1: Screw eye hooks into the backs of the dinosaurs. Trust me – it’s easier to do this before glittering. The hook will provide a convenient handle to hold while working with the glue and glitter. You also will not have to risk knocking glitter off to add the hook if you do it later.

dinosaur ornament eye hooks

Step 2: Paint dinosaurs with watered down glue. Be sure to get all their nooks and crannies like between their legs and on their bellies.

make glittered dinosaur ornaments paint with glue

Step 3: Douse in Glitter. Hold the dinosaur over a piece of scrap paper and liberally sprinkle with glitter. Shake off any excess and return to jar.

glitter dinosaur figurine craft ornament

Step 4: Add hangers. Once they’ve dried, thread ribbon or ornament hangers through the eye hooks in order to hang them your tree!

glitter sparkle dinosaur christmas ornaments

Don’t you love them? Sparkly dinosaurs make me ridiculously giddy. For comparison, the dinos on the left were made with fine glitter, the ones on the right used coarse. I personally prefer the look of the fine glitter but my son likes the chunky glitter ones best. Choose a glitter style that suits your taste.