Wood DIY Star Ornaments and The Success and Struggles to Paint Them Gold Like Dior Charms

Hi everyone! Last year, I decided to buy unfinished wood star ornaments. I had an idea to make them look like star charms that come with purchases made from the luxury fashion house Dior. I saw people online hand their star charms on their Christmas trees, which I liked a lot. Stars are a favorite shape and design, so having a tree full of them caught my eye. The only problem is the people online seem to shop at Dior far more than I do because they had many stars to hang on their tree!

In order to have star charms to hang on my tree, but not go into debt buying random things I may not even want from Dior, I decided to buy affordable wood star ornaments from Amazon. My plan was to paint them the same shade of gold to look just like the Dior charms, except they are wood and they hang from a hole in the wrong spot of the star. Finding the star ornaments was easy. Painting them, and finding different paint to paint them the right color, was tricky and difficult.

Before I go into how I painted them and why I had so many issues with the paint, I wanted to show what the wood star ornaments looked like and what I wanted them to eventually look like.

The star ornaments looked like this before I painted them…

They are just plain, unfinished wood cut in the shape of a star. They could be stained if someone wanted to, but for this project I wanted to paint them gold.

The gold I wanted to paint them is the same color gold as the gold star charms that are put onto purchases from Dior. Dior’s star charm is a lucky symbol for the brand and its founder Christian Dior. Dior himself was a very superstitious man, so there are a lot of inspiration for symbols used throughout the brand drawn from superstitious symbols.

I religious (I’m a Christian) and I’m not superstitious, but a star shape has always held a special meaning for me. I love stargazing and, if I had to opportunity to study astronomy and physics in high school, I would have. Unforutnelty, my high school didn’t offer either and the prerequisites to get into the astronomy and physics classes in college were far to much for me to take and graduate with my actual degree on time.

Still, I love stars. I loved them as a girl and I love them as an adult woman. I love learning about space and space travel. I love learning about physics and even quantum mechanics. (Sometimes known as quantum physics) I wish I could’ve pursue my interest in it into a field of study in college and a career!

Anyway, back to my DIY project, I was always attracted to Dior due to their common use of stars in the brand. Now that I’m an adult, one of the first luxury brands I want to know about the new season’s collection is Dior’s. It’s all because of the stars.

This is why I wanted to paint the wood stars to look similar to the color of Dior’s gold star charms tied to every ribbon of (I believe) every purchase from Dior.

This is what the charm looks like when tied to the ribbon on a 2022 Holiday packaging…

Just for reference, yes, it is my box. I own this box and the contents inside of it. (I wanted to make that clear just in case someone randomly came across my photograph and complained that I stoled it from someone else’s social media! This can sometimes be a problem online. I thought it would be best to be clear before continuing onto how I painted the stars.)

My idea is to paint the wood star ornaments the same color as the star charm. It won’t look exactly like the star, especially since the official charm is made out of metal and the ornaments are made out of wood, but I don’t care. All I wanted to do is paint the ornaments a similar shade of gold. Preferably a paint with a metallic shine.

There is a paint I used to love to use for times like this, but my closest craft stores no longer carry it. Instead, I decided to try whatever was available at Walmart. The only paint I found that fit my needs is the Folk Art brand Metallic acrylic paint in the color Pure Gold…

I was the right shade and it was easy to find. The only problem is it took many coats to paint the ornaments the right shade of gold without any wood color or wood grain showing through!

This is what a star looked like with two coats of paint on it…

Sadly, the photograph isn’t that clear. So, the sheerness of the paint cannot be seen very well. If you compare that photograph to this photograph of a star with more than six layers of paint on it, you can see what I’m talking about…

It is the right shade, but gosh it took a long time to paint! The first two coats were absorbed into the wood. Because of this, it was hard to make a lot of progress to paint the ornaments without using up a lot of paint!

I know there are other paints that would work better than the Folk Art paint, but it was the cheapest and most readily available of all the paints. I purchased fifty star ornaments, so the price of painting so many ornaments with such rich gold pigmented paint will add up quickly. This is why, even though progress was slow, I used a whole small bottle to paint ten stars with enough coats of paint to have a rich gold color without much wood grain showing. I purchased the paint for 56 cents per bottle, making it the cheapest option that would give me the results I wanted.

I started painting the stars in January, so I had plenty of time to paint the ornaments before Christmas. I did have problems with paint supply, as the Walmart I purchased the paint at ran out of stock and didn’t restock for weeks. This slowed the painting of the stars down more than I thought it would. While waiting, I decided to see if I could make the ornaments have a more smooth appearance.

I tried sanding the ornaments after I painted a few coats of paint. It worked to knock down the raised areas of the star, but that was about it. I didn’t use an ultra fine sandpaper, so it did more to scratch the surface than to lightly remove the raised areas. Still, it worked pretty well. After I repainted the star I sanded, it did look smoother, but I needed to repaint it a few times over to make the sanded parts look like the rest of the painted star.

After the sandpaper experiment, I wondered if I should put some sort of a clear coat. I had some Mod Podge already in my house, so I decided to try it. Even though my Mod Podge leaves a gloss coat, I don’t like how glossy it is. I bought it to coat my glitter ornaments, but it dimmed the shine of the glitter too much. For these ornaments, I wanted their metallic shine to be preserved after a clear coat. If that meant I wouldn’t use my Mod Podge, then that means I’ll need to get a new type of coating with a high gloss to it.

In order to see if the Mod Podge is glossy enough to use for my ornaments, I decided to experiment with the Mod Podge. I took some old newspaper advertisements I get in the mail and painted it with the gold paint I used. Once it was dry, I painted the Mod Podge onto it. Even though newspaper isn’t the same as wood, if the Mod Podge would dull the metallic shine of the paint, I figured it would do it to the newspaper.

After the Mod Podge dried, there was a gloss on the part of the newspaper I painted with gold. It also had a shine to it, but it wasn’t a high gloss. I didn’t know what level of gloss I wanted the stars to have, but the newspaper experiment showed Mod Podge does add a gloss without taking away the metallic shine of the stars. I decided to move forward in using the Mod Podge to top coat the star ornaments.

Once I applied Mod Podge to one of the stars, it looked like this…

Sadly, Modge Podge didn’t work for these ornaments. It covered them, but I ran into the same problems I had when I used Modge Podge in the past. (It didn’t react well with the paint) To be honest, I believe I purchased old Modge Podge. This is why it didn’t act the same way as newer Modge Podge do. So, I decided to scrap the Modge Podge idea and search for alternatives.

That’s when I realized I could use clear nail polish to coat the stars. I purchased some cheeper nail polish (I like to use OPI, which is about $10 USD or so per bottle, for my nails) and began to paint the stars. I ma very happy to say it worked well! It didn’t react poorly with the paint and gave it a pretty shine.

And that’s how I painted all fifty of the star ornaments. It took a long time to finish this project, especially with paint supply problems and many coats of paint. Still, it was worth it. I wanted to make these ornaments for over ten years. Seeing them work so well and look the way I want them to was so rewarding. Even though it was not a complicated process, it was tedious and took more time than I imagined it would. Still, it was worth the work and wait!

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

P.S. I’m not posting a photograph of the ornaments on my tree. I wanted to find some really nice ornament hooks to go with the ornaments! I also am considering making some metal ornaments the same way. I’m not sure about the metal ornament idea though. The paint I used may not work well with metal and I don’t want to make complete copies of the ornaments. I just wanted ornaments obviously inspired by the Dior charms without being copies. Same thing goes for metal ornaments!