The One About My Inherent Craftiness (PT. II)

Guess what!? I finally finished one of my projects...and they looks so pretty. Remember when I was talking about getting some Christmas decorations together...well, I completed this one. And I bought a fake tree (with ornaments), and I have some packages to wrap up and put underneath is. My apartment definitely has a festive sort of feel. Now, if I could only find those dang white lights I want...apparently everywhere in Birmingham is sold out of the classic kind - and I do NOT do icicle lights.

I started with these supplies:

red satin ribbon I bought a roll of this at Hobby Lobby but I wish I had bought by the yard somewhere else, it turned out to be not be very high-quality, but I couldn't tell in the packaging.

styrafoam ball remember that adding the walnuts will add about 2 inches to the size of the ball on all sides, so you can choose a smaller one that what you would want the final product to be.

screw eye I chose a larger on so that the ribbon wouldn't be scrunched together at the top, and spraying it along with the ball blends it in to the final product.

floral wire I bought this because Martha told me to - you don't need it. If you can figure out how to tie a bow on that screw eye, all by yourself, without having weird wire holding it in place - then you're good to go.

gold spray paint just remember - shinier is better. A matte finish will not work as well.

I also needed a hot glue gun, and the glue to go with it - but that was simple. I had the gun and I just bought a new package of glue (you're going to use a lot of it).

The first step is to spray the ball with gold paint, and screw in the screw eye. This part is incredibly easy, the only difficult part was finding a place to let them dry. I had some leftover ribbon from Halloween that I didn't need anymore, so I tied them to a coat hanger with that. Then I hung the coat hanger from the kitchen cabinet knob, and swung the door out past the counter. Voila.

Trying to get the walnuts to lay next to each other, without holes is nearly impossible - which is the reason for spraying the ball first. Spray paint tends to soak into the ball so you won't get a very solid cover - but it makes a slight difference. In the end, no one is going to notice because the walnuts get a great coat and look all shiny and festive.

A note on the walnuts - it takes a much larger amount of walnuts to cover these balls that I anticipated. I bought five bags to cover these three balls, and ended up needing to run back to the store for another three.


See?

Then you just have to tie the bow to the screw eye, and loop more ribbon through it to hang. I hung mine from the curtain rod which was very simple, but you could use a nail too (or another screw eye).

And there is the final product (and a bit of my apartment). Trust me, if I can make this work, so can you. I vaguely wish they were a little bit bigger, but that would have just cost more money, so I'll live with these. Maybe next year I'll make two more and have a larger grouping.

My mom also suggested using this same idea on a styrafoam wreath which I thought would be pretty.

** Trust me - that last picture is bothering me more than it is you. I needed to close those blinds, get some better lighting, move the remote, fluff the pillow and that middle ribbon isn't even. Oh well, I'll try to retake it but the chances of that happening are slim to none.