Inspired to do more than put up a Christmas tree this year to decorate our house, I rolled up my sleeves and got right into a mix of DIY and cheap finds. It’s been a rolling process through the month of November, and the house is nearly done.  There will be an overall reveal by next week of all the little touches throughout the main floor of the house.  For now, I want to show one of the cutest DIY Christmas project this year – the DIY Mistletoe Ball.  Extremely simple, but need patience and the vision that it’s gonna be good when it’s done.  (trust me, there was doubts when I first started!)

Materials required:

2 strands of mistletoe garlands from Dollarama ($3 each)
1 styrofoam ball (already had)
Hot glue gun (already had)
wired ribbon of any width and about 3′ (already had)

For me, this project literally cost me $6 + tax – funny how the more you craft, the cheaper things get as you start accumulating a lot of spare stuff!

Start by yanking the little leaves out of the garland – at first I thought I would have to cut them off, but then quickly realizes it snaps off quite easily with a little pull.

with the glue gun, put a dab of glue at the ends and bottom of the twig and stick it to the styrofoam ball.  I started gluing it more horizontally at first, but as I did more, start layering it to lift up the previous leaf to give it more structure.  It gets easier as it gets fuller.  This was also the part where I started doubting if it would work out as it was rather sparse and hard to glue at this point.

Before going too much on the leaves, I added my ribbon.  Didn’t use any fancy trick to this, just made a large long loop for hanging, twist the end to form the base.  Take one end of the ribbon and make a loop for the bow, twist again at the base, making sure that there is enough of a tail versus the loop.  With the other end, do the same thing – make a loop, and leave a tail.  Then use a wire, or twist tie and tie through the twisted base through the loop.  I left a bit of wire at the end with the intention to stick it directly into the Styrofoam ball. For extra security, I also put a dab of hot glue at the base of the ribbon before I pushed it close into the ball.  This way, no matter the weight of the finished product, the ribbon will hold.

 

Then it’s all about filling up the rest of the ball with the mistletoe leaves, one by one.  I found that once the base layer is done, and I started layering in more vertical standing leaves, it got much easier.  The hot glue dab would stick to the neighbour sticks and hold well together.  By the end, it was like making a floral arrangement. All together I used 1 and a half of garland, until I couldn’t see any white left from the Styrofoam, and it looks full and roundish.  Fluffed out the ribbon and that’s it!

Once it was hung in the front foyer, my puppy Ellie came over to inspect it, seems happy with it, don’t you think?

Here’s the close up of what the finished product looks like – I’m quite happy with it, and it is surprisingly sturdy (i used 3 sticks of hot glue in total!) Easy project, took about 30 mins in total!