Frenzied Mutterings of An Odd Duck: Also Known As...

These neat pomanders have many names, kissing balls and wedding balls are just two. I like them because they are super easy to make and of course the ruffle effect sucks me in every stinking time!

Here's what you need to make your own kissing balls:
1 Styrofoam ball of any size, the bigger the ball to start with the bigger your over all project will be.
Hot glue gun and lots of glue sticks.
A pencil or some kind of wooden stick.
Tons and tons and tons of circles cut in your choice of fabric. The more circles the better!

Once you've cut out your circles, mine were about 3'' in diameter but you can go bigger or smaller, depending on how big you want the final product. Use your wooden stick to poke a hole in the Styrofoam ball, not to deeply. You're going to want to keep this depth every time you poke a new hole so try and keep it shallow and consistent.

Now take one circle, fold the bottom part up to the top part like so...

Now take the left corner of the half circle you just folded and fold it over to the right corner of the circle, like so....

Do this one more time, folding left corner over to right corner and you'll end up with something that looks like this. Make sure you get a nice point on the end of the triangle, this is the part that will be glued inside of the Styrofoam ball.

You can leave out this last fold if you want too, keep in mind you'll end up with looser ruffles.

Now place a small amount of hot glue in the hole you created on the first step. Pinching together your folded circle, slide the pointed end of the triangle into the hot glue and hold for just a few seconds until the glue starts to set.

Continue around the Styrofoam ball, either in a straight line if you're particular or you can eyeball the placement of the folded circles like I did. Keep your circles close together so you don't see any empty Styrofoam through the ruffles when you're finished.

Poke, fold, fold, and fold, glue hold. Repeat that dozens and dozens of times until your ball is completely covered in folded circles. Cute already right? You could use these as decorative balls too, instead of buying those in stores our of wood and other material.

If you want to hang it though, like I wanted to, then you'll can use a floral pin and ribbon or if you finished decorating your Christmas tree like we did you can use an extra wire ornament hanger.

You're going to fold your ribbon over and tie both ends of it to your wire hanger or floral pin so measure the right length for where you want your kissing ball to go.

Find a good spot to force your floral pick/wire hanger into the ball and then dab a small amount of hot glue on top of the knots so that everything is sealed in pretty well.

Now you're ready to hang your cute pomanders up. Please ignore my ugly curtains in my bedroom. They are simply there to keep out the light until I can figure out what window treatment I really want. I think these will look cute hanging with whatever I finally decide on. I'm working on a few more of these of other side and I think I might throw in a gray one or two to add a bit more color.