Tutorial: Decorative Snowballs

Greetings my darling readers.  If you are reading for the first time, welcome to my crazy life.  All of you should feel free to follow me.  I have a fair number of tutorials coming up, a lot of which are for Christmas.  Today, I will start with my tutorial on making decorative Snowballs.

Materials Needed:

Epsom salts

Mod Podge 

3" Styrofoam balls (or whatever size you like)

Small paint brush 

Paper plate or other shallow dish 

Bamboo skewers 

Step One

Begin by covering your work surface with wax paper or some other waterproof guard.  I will explain why later.  

Step Two

Pour a cup or so of epsom salts onto your paper plate.

I added a few tablespoons of table salt to my epsom salts

Step Three

Skewer your Styrofoam balls onto your bamboo skewers so they are secure and you essentially have giant lollipops.

Step Four

Paint the outside of your ball in mod podge and roll in your epsom salts.  Helpful Hint: If you want to cover the whole ball in one shot, sprinkle pinches of the salt over the hard to cover areas and gently press.

sorry for the low Q.  Took all photos on my cell phone.  

Again, sorry for the low Q, but you get the idea, right?

A close up of my finished ball... 

Step Five

Put your skewers snowballs into a vase or other container and allow to dry over your protected surface.

I even put them in a nice festive vase...

Important Project Note

The reason it is so important that you cover your surface with something waterproof is because these balls will drip water while drying.  The epsom salts will leech some of the water from the glue and drip onto the table.  It will not affect the finish of the snowballs but it will cause a mess if you aren't careful.

See my drips on my wax paper?  Some how I don't think my Mom would be happy with that  on her antique hardwood table... 

Step Six

When your snowballs are completely dry, remove the skewers from the ball.  If the little holes in the balls bother you, add a small dab of glue and sprinkle on more epsom salts to hide the hole.  

See?  Doesn't the texture look like ice?  As the epsom salts are exposed to air, they will lose some sparkle but the texture still looks lovely and snow-like.  

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  It's pretty simple and I'm sure you could've figured it out yourselves but I thought I would share with you my latest projects.  :)  Tell me what you think in a comment!