All about Christmas balls

A beautifully decorated Christmas tree is the main symbol of the New Year, without which there would be no holiday. The modern industry offers Christmas tree decorations in abundance, but it is still worth admitting that in many ways they are of the same type, a little trivial and do not reveal the individuality of the owners of the house and the celebrating company.

If a person does not mind creating with his hands, then he can create Christmas balls himself literally from improvised materials and it will turn out no worse, but you can feel real pride when answering questions about where such original decorations come from. The task is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance, so it's definitely worth a try!

Today it seems surprising, but decorating the Christmas tree with balls was invented not so long ago - the tradition originated in Germany only more than two hundred years ago. In those days, toys, of course, were only homemade, but many owners did not bother, but decorated the coniferous branches with ordinary apples. The story goes that in 1848 there was a poor apple harvest in Germany, and New Year's magic was threatened.

Local glassblowers came to the rescue, who thought of blowing "apples" from glass. The citizens liked the innovation so much that they began to gradually abandon real fruits in favor of beautiful glass counterparts - and this is how Christmas balls appeared.

Until now, folk craftsmen have come up with many different techniques for making and decorating New Year's toys, which allows the novice craftsman to use the material most convenient for him and choose the method that seems the simplest.When making Christmas tree decorations for the first time, a beginner should follow the tips of the chosen master class as accurately as possible, but then, when it starts to work out, it will be possible to add notes of his own creativity.

It should be noted that the production of homemade Christmas tree decorations, although not particularly difficult, still requires a minimum of practice. Be patient and ready for the fact that you shouldn't expect perfect results the first time. That is why it is recommended to start making not a day or two before the New Year, but at least a week - this is your guarantee that the tree will not be left without decorations.

The specificity of making Christmas balls is that they do not bear any physical load - they should simply please the eye. Thereby the master can use absolutely any materials in the production process, able to keep their shape, higher requirements for strength for raw materials are not put forward! In this case, two large classes of homemade balls can be distinguished. If they are entirely made with our own hands, then most often they are made from foam, papier-mâché, cones, candy, velvet, cardboard, foamiran and even wool.

However, you can take ordinary plastic balls from the nearest store, which will be decorated with your own hands so that they will completely lose their original appearance. To do this, they are most often decorated. various windings of beads and sequins or satin years and paper. Alternatively, the toy can be painted paints... Outdoor decoration is relevant not only for purchased balls, but also for your own crafts, especially foam ones, which would look too boring without it.

Traditionally, there are no special requirements for the color design of New Year's balls. - as a rule, they are not black, but all other bright and festive colors are welcome. Sometimes you even come across transparent toys on sale, but you yourself will not do this at home - unless you decorate a store product. Each master chooses the colors of toys himself, in accordance with his own preferences and needs, but there are certain patterns in the choice of shades.

First, you need to understand that the abundance of various bright colors and shades will certainly appeal to young children, however, adults may not cause a feeling of comfort. If for you the New Year is a quiet family holiday with a fabulous atmosphere, it is appropriate to make toys, even in pastel colors. Green balls will not be very catchy either, but it is advisable to make them slightly different in shade from the needles. Slightly brighter, but still not too defiant will look noticeable, but solid-colored balls of the same color - white, yellow or even red, if only not interspersed.

When creating a holiday for children or just people who are not looking for peace and will not appreciate too calm celebration, create in a completely different way. This is where you need an abundance of bright colors - make balls of all the above colors, add purple, orange, pink and any others to them, if only it was colorful and mesmerizing! There is no longer a requirement for all balls to be of the same color and of the same color; on the contrary, brightly painted and carefully decorated specimens will attract special attention.

The main rule can be formulated as follows: a calm “adult” tree at one glance conveys a feeling of family warmth and home comfort, but a cheerful “childish” one attracts the eye and makes you look at it again and again, because it looks different from different angles of view ...

Making a Christmas tree toy with your own hands, even completely from scratch, is not so difficult, at least if you choose foam for this purpose. The fact is that ready-made foam balls are sold in creative stores, and although you still have to work on them, you already have a blank.

An excellent solution for decorating a foam ball would be kimekomi techniquethat will be intuitive to everyone familiar with the concept of patchwork. Especially for such a craft, foam balls are sold with ready-made grooves, but even if there are none, this will not be a problem - cut them to a depth of about 7 mm yourself using a clerical knife. As a beginner, do not chase complicated patterns, divide the ball into several slices, this is enough. Expand the grooves made and seal with the non-sharp side of the ripper.

Next, you need to make a set of shreds in which the toy will be "wrapped". The edges of the fabric will be hidden in the grooves you made - this will be their fastener, therefore each piece should be slightly larger than the segment allocated for it. Experts advise cutting the fabric, directly pricking it with needles on the ball, so as not to be mistaken in size - the puncture marks on the foam will still be hidden by the fabric.

Cut the fabric carefully, remembering to leave a few millimeters of allowance on all sides. Carefully tuck the "extra" edges of the shreds into the grooves, and when you release the edges of the foam cut, the material will squeeze the fabric.

No matter how skillfully you perform the work, all the same, the joints of the patches above the former grooves will look imperfect. This is not a problem - this is where the outdoor decor needs to be added. The choice of decorative material should be according to your preferences or according to the state of the joints - sometimes they can be hidden with ordinary braid, in other cases you will need whole bows of lace.

Another alternative way to handle the foam ball is to stick it with sequins. For this method, you will need a huge number of not only sequins, but also special tailor's pins - those that have a bead-shaped head at the end. One sequin is put on each such pin, after which the sequin is pinned to the base. There should be enough sequins and pins so that the original surface of the ball is completely hidden under them. Thanks to this, the toy can not be painted at all, and nevertheless, this method allows you to "paint" it with any pattern, using different colors of sequins.

An absolutely amazing idea of ​​making a ball, which can make not only children, but also adults gasp, is an openwork toy made of chocolate. For manufacturing, you will need an ordinary balloon, into which a little water is collected and sent to the freezer. After freezing, the water forms a rounded ice blank, which must be removed and carefully cleaned of rubber.

Prepare the chocolate icing in advanceto quickly apply it in a free pattern to the ice. For even greater attractiveness, the chocolate structure is often decorated with candurin - a special confectionery paint, which in this case is most appropriate in gold tones. Due to the cold coming from the ice, the glaze will quickly solidify, but the ice itself will gradually melt and flow out, leaving only a chocolate figurine.

A balloon can become a blank for openwork pieces of New Year's art even without chocolate - it can be used to make a balloon that is hollow inside from openwork curled threads. To do this, the ball is inflated (usually not completely), tied and coated on the outside with ordinary PVA glue.They are wrapped with threads on fresh glue - it is desirable that they be thick enough, but at the same time they are confidently saturated with glue.

It is not necessary to follow a certain order of wrapping - it will turn out beautifully in any case, if only the ball could be carefully removed at the end of the procedure. After being saturated with glue, the threads will harden and take a stable shape, then the ball is gently blown off and taken out, and the thread loop remains and can be used to decorate the Christmas tree.

Above, we generally considered how to make a ball from scratch or decorate an already finished product. However, the simplest and most obvious ideas are given above, but here we will consider more original solutions that are less common. We will deliberately not consider glowing toys and other master-worthy ornaments, instead Let's talk about simple solutions, the implementation of which is available even to a beginner.

The simplest solution is paint the toy. For homemade products, unless they are made of felt or other colored material, this is generally a prerequisite. However, you can buy monochromatic jewelry and paint on it. What it will be is up to the master himself.

The simplest solution for painted balls is dot coloringimitating snowfall, some people experiment this way even with ordinary balloons that are not fully inflated. If you want to donate a craft to a company that will have to celebrate without you, you can write your name on the balloon - such personalized gifts will mean that you are, as it were, present with everyone.

Often shop or homemade balloons are decorated with photographs. - at this moment they already inevitably become unique and memorable. What kind of photo it will be, come up with yourself - you can paste over the toys with photos of relatives and friends, memories of the past year and dreams of the coming year. Some do vintage balls, using for this purpose the printed out old photographs of the New Year's theme - if the whole entourage as a whole is observed in the same spirit, it turns out very colorful and at home.

For people with a penchant for creativity in all its manifestations, there are no limits at all - decorating a Christmas ball, they can use absolutely any ideas that come to mind. If you wish, you can even decorate the product with stucco molding, using any convenient material for this, most often it is, of course, plasticine and various clay for modeling.

In creativity, the most important thing is to try, and in order to stop doubting and start taking action, you need to see what can happen in the end. For you, we have collected some of the most unpretentious examples of how you can show your creative inclinations in the production of Christmas tree decorations.

The first example shows how to easily improve an existing toy. If a single-colored ball seems too boring for you, chop up some styrofoam, making "snow" out of it, coat a part of the toy with glue and crush it with artificial "snow". That's the whole task!

In the second photo, the ball is pasted over with bright shiny circles, which makes it look like a toy made using the kanzashi technique. What was taken as a basis, we do not know, however, inside it can be either a simple foam ball from a creative store, or just an old jewelry that has been scratched over the years and has lost its luster, and now has a second life.

The third example is the same thread ball, the manufacture of which we considered among other master classes, additionally decorated with a ribbon bow. The threads can be wound thicker, but still it is beautiful and interesting, and even simple.

You can find out how to make a New Year's ball from ribbons in the style of kazanshi with your own hands in the next video.