felt ruffled snowballs (tutorial)
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.
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 eat dinner in my pyjamas regularly. 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.
.
Excellent! Really nice snowballs — I’m going to give it a try. Thanks for posting.
Oh my gosh….I love your snowballs. I too live on a farm and these will be perfect! Thanks so much for sharing..Im on my way to the store!
I’m so glad you like the snowballs! Go forth and craft!
These are so insanely cute. If only I had a monkey to do them for me I’d be set : )
Again, you’ve got to train those kids.
[…] Ruffled Felt Ornament. This one is pretty much the same thing as above but more manageable. I would make them with […]
I love that you did a tutorial. I was searching for something that I could use styro in the shape of eggs with and I think I am going to give it a shot in very pale pastels and cream felt. Did you use wool or poly felt?
Neesie
I used poly felt. Really, any felt will do. The cheaper the better, as you will have a lot of scrap material left behind…
Thanks for the directions, I saw this and was so excited to know how to make em…. But didn’t know how until I found your directions. I just wanted to tell u that I love how u explained step by step, very easy to follow and the pictures are great! Thanks for sharing. Great job!
Thanks so much Amanda! (And thanks for taking the time to stop by to let me know…)
I love these things, addicted to them, but only problem is i havent quite found that “perfect place” where they look gorgeous. Any ideas?
I hang mine in my windows!
So pretty! Thanks for sharing!
Comments on this post are now closed as it was published in 2010.