DIY Card Holder: Holiday Place Card Ornaments

These colorful gilded DIY card holder ornaments make beautiful place cards for the holiday season and beyond!

Holiday entertaining season in my fav! Between Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, there are many opportunities to get together with friends and family to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year. I love these festive gilded card holder ornaments to use for place cards at a formal dinner or to display the offerings on a spread of food. Gilded Card Holder Ornaments make a beautiful entertaining statement and are so easy to make!

DIY Card Holder Ornaments Supplies:

Darice Card Holder Ornaments
Acrylic paint colors of your choice (I used Americana Multi-Surface paints in Iris and
Gold leaf
Gilding adhesive
Small paint brush and firm paint brush

Carefully remove the tops from the card holder ornaments.With the ornament tilted, pour paint colors of your choice down the sides of the ornament all the way around. Make sure to keep the card holder ornament tilted as your pour in the paint so that it doesn’t go straight to the bottom.

Lay the ornaments on their sides in the carton to allow for the paint to marbleize and for the excess paint to drip out of the ornaments. Rotate them about every 20 minutes to make sure that every side of the card holder ornaments are swirled. Once all sides have marbleized, place the ornaments opening side down in their carton to allow any remaining paint to drain out.

Using a small paint brush, apply a thin layer of gilding adhesive on the bottom half of the card holder ornaments.

After the gilding adhesive has set for about 20 – 30 seconds, place small strips of gold leaf on the adhesive coated areas. Handle the gold leaf with care as it is very delicate; also make sure your hands are dry or the gold leaf will stick.

Allow the gold leaf to set for a few minutes and then use a firm brush to dust away the excess gold leaf and create some textural variations on the card holder ornaments.