The ball obsession continues + giveaway winner

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I’ve become obsessed with balls. Well, the ball obsession continues! A while back, I found a picture of glittery Christmas balls on Pinterest and saved it to my crafts board. And now that it’s the holiday season, what better time to make them! They’re so easy and fun to do, and I’m totally bummed that I’ve run out of balls to glitterize. I need to go to the craft store and pick up some more!

I won’t write out a tutorial for you because Amy at Prairie Paper & Ink has already done that, complete with step-by-step pictures (click here for the tutorial). But they’re really easy to make – all you need is plain glass balls, dye re-inker, glitter, a funnel (paper rolled into a cone works perfectly) and latex gloves (trust me, that’s an important supply!)

 

I bought the three inks on the left online from JoAnn. The three on the right are from Michael’s, but they aren’t quite the same thing. Both work for this project, but adding water to the inks from Michael’s caused the ink to get a bit chunky, so I had to use it straight from the bottle. Adding a little bit of water makes the inks on the right easier to work with, and also helps the ink go farther.

So here’s the nutshell version of how to make glitter balls – remove the cap from the ball, put on the gloves, squeeze some dye into the ball, swirl the dye around until the inside of the ball until is completely covered, pour out excess dye, add glitter, shake, and voila, glitter ball!

It’s fun experimenting with different colour combinations and seeing how they turn out. For example, when I was working with the purple, blue, and green dyes from JoAnn, I emptied the excess ink into the same container, which created kind of an ugly dark brown. I thought I’d try it out in a ball anyway. I started with this…

Poured it into a ball…

Added the glitter…

And it came out bronze!

When I mixed green & purple together, out came copper.

And citrus green combined with water turned out almost gold.

I’m telling you, these glitter balls are addictive – I’ve made about three dozen so far, and I need to make more! Here are some of the other colours that are either straight from the bottle, mixed with some water, or two colours mixed together…

   

  

 

If you’re looking for a quick & easy Christmas craft, you have to try these :-)

And now on a completely different note, it’s time to announce the My Memories giveaway winner…

Jessie at Mix And Chic

Congratulations Jessie! Liz at My Memories will be sending you the information you need to download your free software.

And finally, don’t forget that tomorrow is Bake-N-Blog Holiday Edition, Part 2. It’s not too late to whip up a batch of Christmas cookies and participate! Click here for all the details.