Simply Designing with Ashley: Christmas Glass Blocks

Today’s simple holiday home décor item: Christmas Glass Blocks!

These were a lot of fun to make and very easy to do since I enlisted the help of my good friend NataLee. She owns her own business and does many things including designing and cutting vinyl. I have been enlisting her help a lot recently on several projects. You can see her handy work in today’s project but you can also check out her website here.

I have seen several people do glass block decorations, so I thought I would try my hand at them. I absolutely love using glass blocks for Christmas since you can put Christmas lights in them and when you turn them on, they sparkle! (Of course this can be done for any holiday or any reason; the applications are endless!)

For this project I used (3) 6”x8” glass blocks. (I had a difficult time finding someplace that sold glass blocks individually, luckily the Lowe’s near me carries them.) I also used a diamond drill bit (more on this later), (3) strands of 50 Christmas lights with white wire, (3) vinyl images (more on this later), felt pads (optional) and ribbon.

The first thing you will want to do is cut a hole in the bottom of each of your glass blocks. The most important part here is purchasing the correct drill bit. It needs to be a drill bit suitable for drilling glass. There are only a couple of options available at most hardware stores. Below is an image showing the first diamond drill bit that we purchased. Please note, this is not the correct drill bit! I could only find this style in a ½” diameter size which we soon discovered was too small to put a strand of Christmas lights through. So back to the hardware store we went to exchange it.

Below is the diamond drill bit you will need! It is 1” in diameter and, unfortunately, 3x the price of the above one. But if you want sparkly glass blocks, you will need to be able to drill a larger hole. As a side note to this, we were told at Lowe’s that at Christmas time, sometimes, they carry pre-drilled glass blocks. We could not find any, so we drilled our own. Also, if you live close to us, we would be more than happy to help you with this.

Be sure to follow the directions when drilling the holes. Our drill bit directions told us to keep the area we were drilling moist with water while drilling. I enlisted the help of my husband to assist me with drilling while I held the glass block in place. This is easier with 2 sets of hands.

We added felt pads to the bottom of our blocks to help protect the surface we wanted to place them on.

After the glass blocks are drilled, you will need to rinse out the insides of the blocks and let them dry. After they are dry you can insert your Christmas lights inside. I used white lights but feel free to use any color you want.

Next I prepared the vinyl images. NataLee helped me design and produce these vinyl images. I like using vinyl because it is so easy to apply. If you don’t want to order vinyl images or don’t have access to a vinyl cutter, you can always print or cut images yourself and apply them to the glass blocks using mod podge. I would use a glossy finish mod podge if you go this route.

When I use vinyl I like to be sure the vinyl is secured to the top layer by rubbing the vinyl. (Your fingers work fine for doing this, but I like using my pot scraper!)