How to Make Smoking Ornaments

This is a sponsored post. I received compensation in return for creating a DIY project. See my disclaimer for more.

Making Christmas, making Christmas is so fun! And even more fun when you put a spooky spin on it.

I had so much fun making my pumpkin mister with Penguin Dry Ice back in October that I decided to try another DIY for the holiday season: smoking ornaments! Because who says dry ice magic is only for Halloween?

This DIY is just the thing to give your holiday tree an extra spooky feel.

But my favorite part? This is another DIY that will only cost you around $20 to put together! And how cool does this look?

Before we dive into this post, be sure you take a minute to read these safety guidelines for using Penguin Dry Ice.

Supplies:

Clear plastic ornaments
Large ornament hooks
Penguin Dry Ice (here's where to find it near you)
Hot water
Towel
Hammer
Insulated gloves
Large bowl
Tongs
Cup or measuring cup

Instructions:

To get started, you'll want to grab some large plastic ornament balls from your local craft store, along with large ornament hooks. These ornaments come in tons of different shapes and sizes. I went with the largest ones I could find to give myself as large of an opening at the top of the ball as possible.

To ensure our smoke can escape, we're going to remove the scalloped silver piece that sits on top of the opening. You should be able to squeeze the loop and pull it out of the ornament ball, then detach the loop from the scalloped piece.

Once you've removed the scalloped topper, add a hook to your interior loop.

Then squeeze the interior loop piece and insert it back into the ornament. It may not hold because we've removed the scalloped piece that helped hold things in place, but when you hang the ornament on the tree everything will pop back into place. You can set this aside for the moment.

Next, we're going to break up our dry ice. Remember to wear gloves when handling dry ice—I prefer insulated gloves. Penguin Dry Ice usually comes in a large square, so we need to break it up quite a bit so we have pieces small enough to fit inside our ornaments. Luckily, this is pretty easy!

To break it up, I placed the back of dry ice inside a plastic shopping bag and dropped it 2-3 times on the sidewalk outside my apartment.

Back inside, I removed the larger pieces from the bag with tongs and placed them into a large bowl. I wrapped the smaller pieces in a towel and used a hammer to break these down further.

Which resulted in something more like this!

Now we're ready to get things smoking! Add 2 -3 ounces of hot water to your ornament. You don't want to add too much and make the ornament too heavy.

Hold the ornament at the top (above your water line). Using your tongs, drop in several pieces of dry ice into the water to begin the smoking effect. You can learn more about the right water-to-dry-ice ratio in this post from Penguin Dry Ice, as well as tips and tricks for creating long-lasting fog!