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.
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.
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.
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.
Step 4: Add hangers. Once they’ve dried, thread ribbon or ornament hangers through the eye hooks in order to hang them your tree!
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.
15 Comments
Rebecca
I love this idea but have been looking all over for little dinosaurs and can’t find any! Maybe everybody else loves it, too! Any suggestions?
amber whitehead
I’m headed to the dollar store to look for supplies can’t believe how cute these are and can’t wait to make some of our own. Thanks! Your blog has quickly became a favorite of mine =)
bethlaf
THESE are SOOOOO cute , and hey if I can throw Glitter on it !! I am gonna do it !! Bubba being an only Boy will appreciate these!~Elephant for a Dime
carissa
I’m so glad you love it! I got the dinosaurs in the tutorial in the toy section of Dollar Tree. You may be able to find small dinosaurs in party favor sections of larger stores, too.
Maureen M
I have been trying to figure out what to do for my godson for Christmas… now I know exactly what I’m doing. I love these! Might even make a few for the neighbor boys. TFS
Alvina Castro
I love love these! There are so many cutesy girl oriented ornaments but not alot of boy choices. my munchkin will love this!
Rachel
The eye hooks sound much easier than what I was trying: super gluing a tiny bead to the dinosaur’s back. I too had a heck of a time finding dinosaurs recently and finally bought a more expensive set from Toys R Us.
I plan to try the eye hooks on my tiny My Little Pony toys as well. I really want to turn them into ornaments!
Angela - My Personal Accent
I just did this craft with my sweet 2 year old granddaughter CiCi who loves any type of animals and she loved it. We love to try to keep our posts and projects low cost. I love it when we find a project to find that we can get supplies from the dollar store. It gives us such inspiration.
Lexi
when I made these i found that once they had dried the glitter came off on my hands still so i just painted mod podge on them and it worked perfectly!!
iliana
where can i get those hooks from and whats the size
carissa
I got the hooks at my local hardware store. I’m not sure on the size. I would buy your dinosaurs first and then eyeball the screw size based on the size of your dinos.
Chelsea
There are SO many possibilities with these! Like someone above said, you can coat them with Mod Podge or spray with clear coat to keep them from shedding glitter. They could be earrings, pendants, attached to ribbon bookmarks, light pulls, or you could make a stinkin’ glitter dino (or any kind of plastic animal) chandelier!
Teresa
Totally just saw this, took a 10 minute break, and made these. We happened to have everything on hand – love those kinds of projects!! My daughter is a dinosaur fanatic and just had a dinosaur themed birthday party, so we had a handful of the little dinos hanging around. The eye hooks that we used came from a picture hanging kit – they are used to wire a frame – very tiny, so they worked perfectly. I was surprised at how easily they screwed into the dinosaurs – thought that would be the tricky part! We watered our glue down too much at first and nothing stuck. Ended up using straight up Elmer’s with a wet paint brush. That seems to have done the trick, but they are still drying, so we’ll see how long it lasts…. :/ Either way, they are super-cute!! We can always re-glitter if we need to!! Thanks for the fun idea! Now, I’m thinking of other tiny toys we can hook and glitter…. :)