Paper Craft Weekend

For Christmas I received this great book full of tons of cool, crafty projects.

I couldn’t wait to get started on one of them in particular: the 3 Dimensional Ornamental ball. When I completed the first one and shared with some friends, they were so impressed and intrigued that I thought I’d share the process. The results are impressive and deceptively simple. All you need is paper, glue, scissors (or a round paper punch), and something round to trace (if you don’t have the round paper punch).

The first step is to cut 20 circles circles. That’s my cat Harold, helping me separate the blue from the red circles – isn’t he sweet! I used photos from my 2011 wall calendar, but I think old maps or books would be great too.

Once, you’ve got your circles cut, you need to make a stencil of an equilateral triangle that fits perfectly inside your circles. Here are some great instructions on how to get your perfectly sized equilateral triangle. Trace your stencil on the back sides of your circles, and then fold the edges up.

Now you’re ready to start gluing things together:

I found it helpful to make sure the backsides of the circles/triangles were lined up as I was gluing. I used a glue stick, which was pretty tacky. This worked really well because I didn’t have to wait for it to dry before I moved on to the next one.

You’ll want to glue 3 sections: a strip of 10 pieces, and 2 domes made of 5 pieces each:

As you can see above, the strip of 10 pieces will get glued into a ring. Then, you’ll glue the domes to ring. You’re almost done now, but not quite….

I’m a little obsessive when it comes to little details, so I trimmed every edge that didn’t perfectly line up… I really couldn’t stand the thought of seeing the backsides poking up over the edges!

Now you’ve got an impressive and beautiful specimen! I’m going to make a total of 3 and hang them in a cluster in my living room.

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