Guest Post from Straight Stitches

Hi guys! I'm Heather from Straight Stitches, and when Ashley said that she'd like to have some guest bloggers I was all over that!

So let me introduce myself first! I stay at home watching my two boys, which is an adventure. My youngest is almost a year old and my big guy will be 5 at the end of December. No, I'm not home-schooling him, I'm actually trying to avoid it because I am not a teacher, but the school district we live in is quite strict, and does not allow any testing in early (even tho I tested in early 25 years ago), so in my adventures to keep him entertained with not just schooling I try to come up with crafts that he and I can do for the house together. Enter our craft today.

Long before I started my blog, I was crafting for the house, and in my searches for cheap inexpensive decor projects I came across Styrofoam's website. I found this Faux Leather Ball project, but I'm all for keeping it simple, so I changed it a touch. Here's what I did:

Materials:

smooth Styrofoam balls

Brown construction paper (I used one sheet for all 6 balls)

Elmer's glue

water

Shoe polish (natural, brown and black)

What to do:

Tear your construction paper into small rectangles. I did 1" - 1-1/2" strips then tore again from there, about every inch.

Pour a bit of glue into a container, and then add water, until it's soupy. Not Campbell's chicken noodle soupy but more like stew or a chowder. Mix is well.

Dip your construction paper pieces into the glue then squeegee the glue off of the paper with your fingers, and smooth it onto one of the balls. Repeat this step until all your balls are covered. Smooth periodically throughout the covering process. Let the balls dry.

These are still a little wet, but you can see how they're going to shape up.

After the balls are dry, take your shoe polish and polish the balls just as you would your shoes. Let the polish dry then shine them. I added two coats of polish to the balls then shined them up.

Here is a ball polished up with brown wax. You can see the difference between the polished one from the plain ball.

Here's the same brown polished ball after it's dried some.

Here are all the colors of polish from right to left; brown, black and natural.

Here's a polished ball after the two coats of polish. Its got a nice sheen to it.

Display however you please! Please don't mind the smudge or the dust in the pictures below. I was going to take new ones, but for our anniversary the hubs decided to share his stomach flu, so yea, not much is getting cleaned. Isn't the hubby so nice? :)

Well I hope that you guys enjoyed this little tutorial, and have a great week! Its been a blast visiting Ashley!