Lessons

Lesson Info

Assembling the Ball

So to start out, I want to begin by picking out the contents that I'm going to include in this surprise ball. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select about ten items and lay them out in front of me just so that I don't lose track because you're rolling them together. It's easy to forget what you've already placed into the surprise ball. So let's do one of our noisemaker balloons, a party hats, a little parachute guy. Um, I definitely want to do one of our charms party poppers. I think that we should do a couple of jokes. See, how does the man on the moon cut his hair? Eclipse it right, that's. Pretty good. What happens when frogs park illegally? They get towed. Its all groaners it's. Only funny if you're in kindergarten. Ok. Uh, let's. Take a ring. Let's. Take a fortune telling fish we're going to take one of our japanese paper balloons. How many do I have now? Two, four, six, eight, ten. I think we'd get out a few more things in let's. Add in a piece of candy and put up the how...

bout. One of our compass rings now it's always a good idea to put the largest component in the center, and one of the little tricks that I found in order to help me keep a little bit more of a spherical shape when I'm creating the surprise balls is to use thes old school vending machine capsules in the materials list for this class have included a link of an online source, but if you google or put into any search engine vending machine capsule, you're going to find dozens of options for these. So inside of this, I found that the party poppers fit really snugly. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take one of my jokes, I'm gonna roll it around party popper gonna stick that inside, going to give it a healthy dose of confetti on top of that, and then we're going to snap sandwich that right in in the middle. There you end up with a nice compact or to start making your surprise ball with now what I have here are several different colors of inexpensive crepe paper streamers pick one at random, and we're just going to start wrapping it for the beginning. You don't even need to it hear it. To the capsule for the center or whatever the object might be and I should say you don't have to have the capsule it just is a little bit of a tool or a trip to help keep it a little bit more spherical say that I wanted to start the center with the ring pop perfectly fine and I'll show you is we're progressing how to kind of keep it a little bit more of a round shape so I'm just going to start wrapping it around and that you continue to raph one thing you may notice is that your crepe paper roll gets a little unruly starts to jump around the surface of your table maybe gets knotted up so one trick that I found a kind of contain that a little bit is introducing either jar or bowl you can easily just stick the crepe paper roll in there and it keeps it in a stationary position makes it a little bit easier to deal with so I'm gonna roll this for a little bit and then I'm going to switch colors and just going to give it a little tear switch out to the orange and as far as how frequently you tuck in a new treats or sweet it's really up to you I kind of have gotten to the habit of each time I switch colors I tend to add in a new treat and again you want to add the both your items closer to the center so the next thing I'm going to add in is our little parachute guy he's a little bulky we'll put him towards the center I'm just sort of holding him in place with my thumb I've got the whole thing in my left hand covering him up with the beginning of this next crepe paper roll and again just giving it a little bit attention as I roll it and you kind of see crepe paper has that stretch to it there's something in the manufacturing process that gives it that almost fabric like quality I'm gonna speed through a few rounds here as far as how large you go with the surprise balls it's really up to you the ones that I have been making I tend to keep them sort of softball size I seen few tutorials where people have made massive ones that are more along the lines of an actual beach ball and I've seen many ones which are actually really sweet and may be more realistic if you're going to be creating them as party favors for a really large group. So I think I've added enough orange at this point I'm going to get a little tear and I'm going to add in a piece of candy next switch out my color I'm going to go with some green again I'm just sort of holding the new object with my thumb and then stretching the crepe paper over it, hold it in place, you see that I am not even it hearing one end of the crepe paper as as I go along it's not really necessary, I think when I started making these put a little case of scotch tape, or use a little but a glue toe hold the crepe paper when I switched colors, but honestly, I found, with a little bit of tension, that step isn't even really necessary. Now you can see now that I've got sort of mom or fear ical spherical shape here and then it's a little lumpy, because I just added in that piece of candy, one of the tricks and placement now is to kind of like even out those areas around the lumps. So the next thing I'm going to add in is one of the rings, and so this lumpy area, I'm just going to kind of set it next to it in a tear off and switch colors let's go to some red and again, sort of holding in place and wrapping it around. One of the things I really do love about thes party favors is that any age group can make them. This is a really fun activity if you have kids or work with kids to get them involved in the goal here really is not to create a perfect sphere I think that's a little unrealistic especially if you're working with you know six or seven year olds making these but they have such a fun time putting them together it's a great activity give it a nice role here all right let's switch to a different color and a different treats the last of my really bulky items is the compass ring so I'm going to add that in next hold that in place and let's switch over to some blue now one of the other really cool things about surprise balls they can be used as a party activity in the u k and other commonwealth countries you often hear of a game called pass the parcel at the holidays and essentially what that is is at the dinner table you have a surprise ball first person takes it begins to unravel it when the first treat falls out they keep that treat and they hand it to the next person and so it kind of makes its way around the dinner table it creates a really happy mess it's a lot of fun and it's really a nice way to start a festive meal together or even to serve you know maybe one rolling after dessert and it contained the mess keep it away from the food all rights rolling, rolling rolling I am going to tuck in a paper joke and to do that I'm just sort of wrapping it around the edge of the surprise ball, feeling it in the blue crepe paper and let's switch off now let's do a little yellow now one thing I want to do before we get too far into this yellow layer is to add a little confetti. This is kind of fun as your unrolling tio get a little splash confetti so I'm just doing a little handful of it they're concealing it in the raft on we keep going I feel like I'm doing pretty good job keeping all of it contained and maura less a spherical form, you can kind of see it's a little egg shaped at the moment I still have a little lump up here at the top, so as I switch off and go to my next item, which I'm going to do the balloon whistle, I'm going talk that right next to the lump in again, it's sort of if you do these adjacent to one another, it tends to even itself out as you are wrapping the crepe paper around it. I think I've gone through all of my colors, so I'm going to rotate back to the orange now and I think it's fun to use a variety of colors on the interior but that being said, if you are throwing an event with a specific color palette there's no reason you can't use crepe paper that coordinates it's so inexpensive it's an absolutely every single party store so it's very accessible orange let's switch off let's go back to green I'm going to tuck in my little vintage charms stick them right up there you can see we're up to about the size of an orange or baseball at this point to pretty good size I definitely want to get it just a little bit larger one of the things you might want to consider in in regards to the scale of your surprise ball is how you want to decorate the exterior we're going to get into the exterior decoration a little bit more in our next segment but I have seen these decorated as fruits and if you were doing an orange or an apple or a peach or a pair, this would probably be a good place to stop that we're going to do some that are a little bit larger going keep going and again as I, um wrap this I'm creating just the smallest amount of tension teo cause the crepe paper to stretch ever so slightly sometimes the crepe paper if you pull too hard will rip midstream don't worry about it it's just maybe then an opportunity to go on to the next color so let's go on with just a pink I'm gonna tuck in now so our fortune teller fish so it is you can see I've saved some of the flatter, larger objects as we get closer to the exterior of the ball just because they're a little bit easier to conceal, they're not going to create the same sort of lumps and bumps as you know, the little packs of bubble gum or the charms stickers are also another really good thing to conceal your creating this for a kid that collects stickers, you could actually do an entire surprise ball filled with them. Depending on how much tension you're putting on the surprise ball, sometimes they can get away from you and roll across the table. Nothing's gonna break here, that's one of the things that's so great about these is really no way to screw it up, and you could see him just sort of making a mess. I'm not super concerned about how pretty the interior is because this is really the festive contents they're just gonna still all over the place. We're going to be a little bit more meticulous when we decorate the exterior alright, gonna rip that off? We're getting down to our last couple, I'm going to go ahead in ad in our paper crown with some blue, and I really do love the way that the jar horrible contains the crepe paper roll. It just makes it more enjoyable process because if you are chasing that great paper streamer all over the place, it's really it's not as much fun now if you do end up with some pretty prominent lumps and you're trying to figure out ways to conceal them. One thing you can do is set your surprise ball down, pull out a length of the crepe paper and do a little padding and basically just going to sort of like, create a little pad and wherever the sort of lump for dividends is, I could place this over the top switch off to my next color and just kind of conceal it because you're not always going to be able to find the perfect content to fill in all of the contours as you're rapping and so it's an easy way to sort of adjust the shape, getting super close, my friends all right, so I'm going to stop with the red I'm gonna add on our little paper japanese balloon even see how nicely that fits around the exterior and switch off to my blue hold that into place now if you have kids, one thought is this is this is a fun and inexpensive and really personal gift to make four grand parents or other family members if your kids work to spend some time writing some notes, doing little drawings, maybe even making tiny plato sculptures and then wrapping it all up in a surprise fall I think I would be the happiest grand parent alive because you know that's what they want more than anything or those sort of little mementos of their childhood and that's a nice way to present them infested all right, look, we're getting to a good size I feel like it's I stop in sort of examining I feel like it's pretty spherical it's pretty solid um, again, if you want a larger you can either continue adding additional items or you just you know, maybe you finish off one or two rolls of the crepe paper and that's a little bit of the padding for the prizes start to fall out, so I think that I am going to dio one more quick color, I'm going to go to my orange and this is going to be my final round. What I'm going to do on this guy is I'm going to pull it just a little bit taught her to make it a little bit smoother on the exterior cm given it a little bit more of a pole there and as I'm wrapping it, I'm going to kind of rotate the ball back and forth well see, I pulled a little hard so it ritz I mentioned that before don't worry about it just pick it right back up where it wass and again, I'm just pulling this a little bit tighter so that it rains in any of the loose edges of the previous role and it's going to make it just a little bit easier to decorate. So at that point, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna tear that off. Now. This is the only piece that I actually am going to wait here down. I'm going to take a little piece of scotch tape and just secure that and that's, how you compiled the contents of your surprise ball. Next step, we want to decorate the exterior.