There is nothing more magical and exciting than to create a small miracle with your own hands, even if it was once invented and embodied by someone else. After all, you can always add something from yourself: interesting additions or a piece of the soul.
And attracting to the process of their own offspring, looking for your attention and creative skills, will bring together and help to discover a lot of new and unknown, which is so rich in the world of crafts, necessary or cute. So, today we will learn how to make a ball of thread and glue, consider different options for raw materials and various ideas for decorating a house, a festive table or a children's corner.
We start with the selection of supplies
The variety of modern crafts designed to decorate our lives is huge. Balls are simple but very impressive crafts.
A set of materials necessary to create a souvenir:
• inflatable (air) balls of small diameter;
• any greasy cream or petroleum jelly;
• a skein of a favorite thread, which we will decorate the ball with;
• long (collar) needle. It is required depending on the choice of glue and the way it is wetted by the thread;
• glue - clerical, PVA or specially made.
Before you learn how to make a ball of thread and glue, and before you start selecting materials for the job, you should decide on the size of the future craft, the quality of the thread, which will be the main decorating element, and the gluing method.
Balloon: basic requirements
We will figure out how to make a ball of thread and glue with your own hands. The basis for the manufacture of this souvenir are balloons.
When choosing them, you should be guided by the following considerations:
• balls should be round, because ovals require more accuracy, cannot always keep a given shape and are not as spectacular and universal as regular spheres;
• It is better to take the balls not very large, a diameter of 8-12 cm is the best option, especially if this is the first craft.
And it is also important that the ball is stronger, that is, the cheapest option can fail at a crucial moment, not blown away in time and ruin the future product. It is worth buying balloons with a margin and carefully checking them before starting work.
Choose glue
Successful completion of crafts depends on the composition of the glue. You can use stationery silicate glue in a plastic bottle. In this case, we need a thick needle. They pierce the walls of the bubble and pull the thread through the glue, thereby wetting it, avoiding excessive wetting (the second wall of the bottle serves as an obstacle). This is a good and economical way, but the use of PVA glue is more often welcomed by our craftsmen. This universal glue is more plastic, softer, and it seems that the craft processed by it is more pleasant to the touch and even warmer. Although each method has its own adherents. PVA glue is heavy, so it is diluted with water in a 1: 1 ratio, mixed well and poured into a flat dish. Then the thread is passed through the glue solution. There is also a special recipe for glue that is most suitable for such work: sugar is added to an aqueous PVA solution. Such a mixture gives the manufactured crafts the necessary rigidity and strength. The proportions of glue are as follows: 30 g of water, 15 g of glue, 4-5 teaspoons of sugar.
How to make a ball of thread and glue-pencil? It is also possible, but the baby’s help will be needed here, since you should stretch the thread along the glue stick protruding from the case, pressing it well so that it has time to soak, and for this you need another pair of hands.
The main element of decoration is the thread
The thread is selected depending on what you want to see on the output. Thick woolen or acrylic threads can be used.
There are many magnificent decorative yarns: with knots, sequins, various influxes and other interesting elements. The thickness of the thread is selected based on the functional load that the future craft will carry. Balls of large diameter, decorating the premises of impressive areas, made of thick thread, jute or light cord, will look great. A graceful Christmas tree toys should be made of thin cotton, linen or artificial fibers. In other words, the question is not only how to make a
ball of thread with your own hands, but also what exactly will decorate the souvenir. When the question of the place where the craft will be located is resolved, they begin to implement the idea.
Workplace preparation
The surface on which the process of the appearance of balls-crafts should be protected from the aggressive effects of the starting materials. It is especially difficult to wipe the countertop from silicate glue. A piece of oilcloth or garden foil will help out. They cover the work surface. Before you make a ball of thread and glue, you need to protect your own clothes and hands. An apron and gloves made of silicone or thin rubber are very useful here.
How to make a ball of thread with your own hands
So, we begin work. Pour a portion of the prepared glue into a narrow container (we are talking about how to make a ball of thread and PVA glue). Put the coil of the selected thread side by side. We inflate a round ball to the required size and tightly knit it, leaving a sufficiently long end of the thread as a fastener that is useful when drying a finished souvenir. We inflate the inflated balloon with cooked cream, petroleum jelly or any oil. This is done so that the ball does not stick to the threads. If this happens, tearing and pulling the remnants of the ball out of the resulting sphere will be impossible without deformation of the craft. By lowering the thread into the container with glue and wetting it, we begin to wrap the ball. It is possible to apply turns by pulling the thread a little, in any order or arbitrarily, depending on the plan.
It has already been said above how to make a ball of thread and clerical glue. You will need a thick needle, with which you can stretch the thread through the bottle with glue and wind it the same way as when working with PVA glue.
Drying Features
After the ball is wrapped, it should dry completely. Here you will need the long end of the thread. When drying, the ball should not come into contact with any surfaces, so the best option would be to attach it to a horizontal stick, fixed in the place where the crafts dry, without disturbing anyone. For complete drying, a sufficiently long time is needed - 1-2 days. But accelerate this process is not necessary. Heating appliances located nearby with hung crafts can deform them. If you overdo it with heating, then the source ball can burst and nullify all efforts. Therefore, do not make unnecessary efforts. Let the balls dry under natural conditions.
Final stage
After drying well, the threads wrapping the ball harden perfectly and will keep their shape. Now you need to carefully remove the original rubber ball, which serves as a kind of frame. You can simply pierce it with a needle and, when it is deflated, pull it out of the formed sphere with a hook.
That's all. The craft is ready. Today we learned how to make a ball of thread and glue. It can be used in the form that turned out, or you can decorate with sequins, crystals, artificial flowers, etc. Magnificent Christmas tree decorations are balls covered with acrylic spray paint. All shades of bronze, gold and silver tones are especially spectacular. Such balls often serve as the basis for elegant decorative compositions, and are also used as single accents in decorating the space surrounding us.