Surprise! tutorial – how to make a surprise ball

19 12 2009

We’ve been making these for the last few years for Glitter Glue Princess’s pals. This year, 2 young ladies were chosen. What follows are photos of one of the balls being made.

The photo below shows everything we put into the surprise ball.

This year it was really all about a charm bracelet, and three charms that the kiddo selected for each girl. She also thought they could use lanyards for their school id’s that matched. We bought a big book of xmas stickers and cut them up to share between the girls, added a target gift coin, and a few more trinkets, and there you have it! One roll of streamers makes two to three balls, depending on the number of layers and amount of trinkets contained.

I do mine differently than a few of the instructions out there, as I use one continuous piece of crepe paper to do the wrapping. Initially, that was problematic, as the crepe paper roll would twist while you were winding. But… I found a solution! A pencil and an extra set of hands, or something to set the pencil upon, makes quick work of the roll of crepe paper, and speeds you up immensely.

First, you pick the bulkiest thing you have – in this case, it is this:

To make him more compact, he was rolled and taped to make the center of the ball.

Then, you just start wrapping,

and wrapping,

and wrapping. The goal here is to wrap with your items to come out with a round shaped ball at the end. So, if you start with something flat and tubular as I did, you need to build up the sides to get to a ball shape.