Tutorial: Surprise Balls

Yesterday I mentioned I made some surprise balls for the kids - my niece & 2 nephews. It's sort of a tradition. I make them when I go home for a holiday, Thanksgiving being the most memorable because of its proximity to Halloween. This year, I found these cool skull goblets to hold them.

Awesome! Now here's how I make the surprise balls (originally seen on Not Martha):

Materials:

crepe paper streamers - at least 1 roll per ball

plastic fillable egg or ornament

small, flat toys, candies & trinkets

stickers

Methods:

1. Gather a whole bunch of small, flat-ish trinkets. Temporary tattoos, stickers, loonies/toonies, balloons & candies always go over well. Some mini water guns were a big hit one Easter.

Fill the plastic egg with something special.

2. Using stickers to hold the end of the streamer in place, start wrapping the egg.

3. Slip the toys, candies & trinkets between the layers of crepe paper as you go along.

Make sure each piece is covered before you add the next one so that the ball is more stable & fun to open.

4. Continue wrapping until you've hidden all the trinkets. Try to add things evenly around the ball so that it ends up being more or less round. If the streamers rip or you want to change colour, use stickers to hold the ends down.

Give it to someone special - watching them unravel it is just as fun!