Decorated Paper Bauble Tutorial

I have a wonderful group of Home Ed friends whom I meet up with “formally” at least every fortnight (and more if possible!!). It is just fantastic to have around me a group of (mostly) women (the odd time you can find a husband wandering around sheepishly among us) who are generous with their time and wisdom and company. 

This week we were meeting up, and for many of us, we won’t get to meet again until January, so I made them a very small gift of thanks and Christmas blessing. These Christmas baubles are lovely and easy to make, and would be a great simple gift for kiddies to make too!

I covered polystyrene balls with strips of paper torn from a book with yellowed pages (“King Lear”, from the early 1970’s if we are to get technical!!) I glued the paper on with PVA glue- make sure to keep smoothing the paper down so any creases are flattened, I kept rubbing the glue on and it softens the paper and smoothes easily.

 

Onto the dry papered bauble, I stuck a 2” x 1” rectangle of an old map, then an old Irish Christmas stamp from the 1980’s. I had tea-dyed a sheet of rose- decorated tissue paper, and tore a strip of this which I glued partially on top (I covered all the collage-ed bits with a 50% PVA and 50% water mix. This glue mix gives coherence to your collage so the parts don’t look disparate in relation to each other)

 

With my glue gun, I glued a piece of tea-dyed linen string, with a button on top to cover the glue.

I also added two more buttons onto the collage (I would have preferred to have had white or cream buttons, but had to make do with a rainbow of colours!)

I also made a couple of fabric wrapped baubles,

also decorated with buttons, and some 

ric-rac and fabric ribbon. 

♥ ♥ ♥ Only 10 days to Christmas!!!!!!! ♥ ♥ ♥

Posted by Emily