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After making my ruffled wreath a few weeks ago, I got to thinking about how easy it would be to make some ruffled snowballs for our big picture window. Mostly because I saw a great photo in Style at Home Magazine of ornament orbs (below), and was instantly besotted. After taking a trip to a few stores to collect ornaments I started to think: gee, these are going to be bloody expensive to make. Ornaments aren’t cheap these days, especially when you need enough to make a perfectly lovely hanging orb. Or six perfectly lovely hanging orbs.

(image: Style at Home Magazine)

Enter cheap felt and styrofoam. Now, I’m not going to say that my ruffled snowballs are as elegant as the ornament orbs featured above, but I live on the Cat Farm. We don’t need no elegant things here. We like felt. And fur.

Get yourself some styrofoam balls, pins, felt and ribbon for hanging. As with the ruffled wreath you’re going to have to cut lots of felt circles out. My styrofoam balls were 3 inches in diameter, and I made my felt circles slightly smaller than 2 inches in diameter. If you have a larger ball, you might want to use larger felt circles, and if you’ve got teeny styrofoam balls, you might want teeny felt circles. It ain’t rocket science. It’s craftin’.

Drill a hole through the styrofoam ball. I used a knitting needle.

Then pull a ribbon through the centre. I used a crochet hook to grab the ribbon and pull it through. Make sure you have enough ribbon to hang the snowball at your desired height.

Secure the ribbon to the bottom of the ball. I used pins. (The other end of the ribbon will be secured to whatever you are hanging your snowball on – a curtain rod or window frame, for example.)

Fold and pin the felt rosettes. Fold a felt circle in half, and then in half again. See? You’ve made a rosette. Pin those rosettes all over the snowball. Pin them fairly close together and vary their rotation to give a nice, plush appearance.

Hang. I’ve got several snowballs to hang in my front picture window. One big sucker and a few baby snowballs to keep it company. I’ve gone with a white theme, but you could use any colour you like. Red might be nice…

Simple. A monkey could do it. Provided that monkey were able to get itself to a fabric store to buy the felt.

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