Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Make Decor Spheres from Old Magazines and Leftover Yarn!

The other day I needed to come up with some quick and cheap decorative spheres. I stage a foyer table for a local condominium, but their budget is very small, so I have to get pretty creative with it.


Staples for this foyer include inexpensive or free things, like branches and thrift store accessories and Reader's Digests with the covers ripped off and tied into bundles. And LOTS decorative bowl filler. In the fall, we used dollar store pumpkins, painted cream. Over the holidays, we used artificial pears.



For February, we needed something cheerful for Valentine's Day, but it also needed to transition into Spring. I thought I might cover some inexpensive wiffle balls with pretty fabric or paper, but alas, even wiffle balls were out of my price range.


Racking my brain, I looked across the room and saw some old magazines in a basket. The light bulb came on! I began yanking pages out of the magazines and wadding them up into balls, and before I knew it, a bowl of gorgeous decor balls was finished.


To make your own decorative spheres you will need
  • old magazines (7-8 pages makes a baseball sized sphere)
  • torn strips of fabric (I scavenged an old curtain and some old clothing)
  • leftover yarn and trim assortment


Form seven or eight magazine pages into a ball, starting by wadding one or two sheets into a tight ball, then adding one layer at a time until a sphere is formed.  Next, wrap the paper sphere with strips of cloth. This will help you define the sphere shape and give you some foundation color and texture.


Now, you can wrap the spheres with yarn. I simply tucked all my loose ends in, but you can glue them if you prefer.


Fill bowls or baskets with your new spheres, and you are done!


Once the supplies were gathered, I was able to make about two dozen spheres in just a couple of hours (I had a very small window of work time, so I was moving pretty fast).


The installation looks cheerful and bright, and lots of folks have commented on how welcoming the entry feels when they arrive home at the end of the day.


My favorite part about the installation is that all those decorative spheres were made using materials that were diverted from the landfill!


If you enjoyed this tutorial, please feel free to share a link to this post on your favorite social media site. Be sure to subscribe to House Revivals, so you won't miss any of the fun projects we have planned. Before you leave, check out the sidebar for links to lots more popular projects. Thanks so much for stopping by!

See lots more ideas for using leftover yarn, in this post, and in this post.  To see another fabric recycling idea, click here.