Finished String Ball Mobiles

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We made 3 mobiles out of the string balls.  You can see my posts about the string balls here.  To make the base of the mobile, we took thick cardboard rings and wrapped fabric around them.  We secured the fabric with hot glue. 

String Balls pt. 2

  

 So, in one of my previous posts, I talked about making string balls.  All you need to do is blow up a balloon, dip yarn in glue and wrap the balloon.  When it dries, pop the balloon and take out the deflated balloon.  Easy, right?   I started making the string balls with a few classes last week.  It was definitely a comedy of errors.  This was not an easy, low stress project.  First, we blew up the balloons too big.  If the balloons were larger than a small melon it was hard for the kids to keep a grip on them.  The balloons kept slipping out of their hands, flying across the tables, bouncing, and splashing glue in people's hair.  So, TIP #1:  BLOW UP SMALL BALLOONS (like water balloon size)!  So, I went out and bought a bunch of water balloons, the smaller kind.  I soon discovered you can't blow up water balloons with your mouth.  The kind we bought just would not blow up!!  So TIP #2:  BUY REGULAR BALLOONS, the smallest kind, and blow them up to a small size.  TIP #3:  Cut a few really long pieces of yarn and use them to wrap the balloon.  Wrap tightly otherwise they will fall off.  Don't just place the yarn on the string, actually wrap and overlap it.    Some of the string balls collapsed after they were dry and we had to reinsert a balloon and blow it back up to push out the sides.  Then, we reinforced them with more yarn and glue.  

We are making these into large mobiles.  Soon I will show you pictures of the mobiles!!