DIY Ticking Stripe Ball Garland
The last two years I used burlap and plaid ribbon around my tree and this year I wanted to change it up so I started brainstorming some new ideas. I remembered seeing some cute ball garland on Destiny’s tree a couple years ago and that was my inspiration. She used socks for hers – GENIUS but I was trying to keep my cost down as much as possible and hadn’t seen any cute and affordable socks to use.
Before I share how I made these, this was a super simple and quick DIY that only took a couple hours and that was with breaks to keep the baby happy so that was a huge win for me! This is my first DIY since becoming a mom and I didn’t realize how much I missed it!
Here are the few supplies:
- Ticking Stripe Fabric – ordered HERE I just ordered 2 yards
- Styrofoam balls – These are 3 inch balls that I had these leftover from my ornament wedding favors 5 years ago and never had used them so this was perfect!
- Hot Glue – because y’all know I can’t sew!
- Twine
You can make these using old ball ornaments you no longer use, those cheap balls from kids ball pits, foam balls or more! I always encourage to use what you have if possible!
Here is how to make it:
Step 1: Figure out how wide the fabric needs to be to fully cover the ball and leave a little room to overlap for glue.
Step 2: Once you have that width cut down the entire strip of fabric so you have one long piece at the same width. The ticking stripe pattern makes this easy if you cut along the stripes.
Step 3: Start hot glueing it together to make a round, cylinder shape. I just ran a small line (8 inches or so at a time) of hot glue and then overlapped the other side until the entire piece of fabric is glued together. You will want to make sure you don’t accidentally glue the top to the bottom so just make sure you keep that “tunnel” open. I like to use a paint stick for this to just insert and separate without burning myself.
Step 4: Once I had the entire strip of fabric glued I started sliding in my foam balls. I made my one strip of fabric into two small garlands but you can do it all as one large garland piece also. Each piece of garland had about 6-8 balls for mine. I didn’t care if they were exact since they would appear to pop in and out of the tree.
Step 5: Flip your garland over so the glued seam is on the bottom and starting on the end, begin tying off the garland with twine or your string/ribbon of choice. Then tie in between each ball until you tie them all off. Once I got about half way, I would cut my fabric and repeat this step for the second small piece of garland. I just kept making them until I ran out of my 2 yards of fabric.
That’s really it! Because I had the foam balls, twine and hot glue this project was super cheap and easy and I love the change of shape and pattern it adds to the tree! If i get sick of the ticking stripe and want to make similar with a different pattern, I can just cut off the fabric and reuse the foam balls another year!
