|Craft a playful snowball garland for your own Christmas tree. Garlands like the one shown above were hung on Christmas trees in American homes during the Victorian era.|
|Unravel white cotton balls before wrapping the|
egg carton cups.
- white cotton balls
- paper egg cartons
- white school glue
- white tacky glue
- dental floss
- white or translucent beads/bugle beads
- two hooks
- translucent glitter
- Collect and cut apart the cup shapes from paper egg cartons. I used 13 for this particular garland but it doesn't really matter how many of these your choose to include.
- Pull out a relatively long piece of dental floss and thread it onto a needle. Make sure that this needle is thin enough to thread floss through your bugle beads. It is important to use dental floss instead of thread for this process. It is by far more resilient.
- Thread two or three extra long bugle beads and then one larger white bead before centering a portion of the dental floss across the egg cup.
- The egg cup should have a continuous beading of tacky white glue squeezed around the top edge of cups lip. See the pictures below.
- Now gingerly take a second paper egg cup and press it on top of the glued edge. You can add a bit of white cotton batting to help seal this uneven seam around the two egg cups.
- It take only a few seconds for this seam to bond well enough for you to keep working. String another few bugle beads onto the other side of the finished snowball shape and repeat this process until you have the number of egg carton "snowballs" that you want on your garland. See pictures below.
- Wrap the remaining ends of the dental floss around a wire hook for each end of the garland.
- Glue approximately half of the wire hook to the inside of each end paper egg cup before gluing together the end snowballs of the garland. Let the garland dry thoroughly.
- Unravel white cotton balls before wrapping the egg carton cups.
- Spread white school glue with your finger tips over the surface of each cup and wrap cotton batting onto the surface. Repeat the process until you are happy with how the snowball looks.
- Coat the last layer with white school glue and sprinkle translucent glitter onto the wet surface. Let the garland dry.
|Detailed photographs of the snowball garland craft. Far Right, see how the garland is threaded and assembled at the same time.|
|The egg cups do not need to fit together perfectly. Making snowballs is not an exacting process. Have fun, it will stick.|
|Here is the end result. I think this garland looks best on a silver and white tree. It is also an authentic inclusion to a Victorian tree. The garland is so light weight that it may even be hung on a feather tree!|
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