Do-It-Yourself Book Snowballs

What you need:  

An old book  

3-inch circular craft punch

2-3  styrofoam balls  (I used 1 5-inch ball and 2 3-inch)
Flat end of a pencil or pen

Hot glue gun and multiple glue sticks

Wooden skewers or dowel rods

Directions:

Start with an old used book.  Not too old, mind you — a book with brittle pages won’t work for this craft — but one with a little age and some yellowing will be perfect.  Check our thrift shops or your local library’s discard section for books.

A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite book ever, but my paperback copy was old and pretty ugly.  Not to mention the fact the guy who wrote the lengthy afterword left me convinced he never actually read the book.  

Now my only copy of my favorite book is gone, but I’ve been wanting a pretty hardback copy anyway.  And my daughter already has a lovely set of hardback Jane Austen novels, so it wasn’t hard for her to sacrifice that awful paperback copy in the picture above.

Carefully tear pages from the binding, no more than 5 or 6 at a time to keep them as whole as possible.  For your information, it took a 350 page book to make three snowballs.  And while, yes, you can certainly use more than one book on a project, keep in mind that the colors of book pages can actually vary quite a bit from pure white to yellow to a weathered tan.  Just make sure the pages of the books you use are similar in color.

Start punching circles from your pages.  My book was fairly small, so I was only able to get two punches per page.  My punch has scalloped edges, by the way, which definitely makes for a prettier snowball in the end.  These punches aren’t exactly cheap, but with a 40% off coupon I managed to get mine for $12 at Hobby Lobby.  And I will be using it A LOT, so it was a good investment.

Fire up your hot glue gun.  Hope yours looks better than mine.  I’ve had it close to 20 years and it looks like it, but it’s still working, so I can’t complain.

Fold one book circle over the flat end of a pen or pencil, press a bead of hot glue onto a styrofoam ball, and then press your “blossom” onto the glue.  Hold it there just a few seconds to give the glue time to cool and voila!

LOVE being able to read lines on my book snowballs that I recognize and love.  “Recalled to life…”  But if you’re using a book you aren’t familiar with, don’t worry:  Nobody’s likely to see and be able to read anything much…

Keep adding blossoms….

…And more blossoms….

…And more blossoms….

…Until your ball is completely covered, keeping in mind that the tighter you place your book blossoms, the fuller your snowball will look and the fewer gaps you’ll see up close.

Use thin dowel rods for “stems”, pushing them into your ball and then cutting them to whatever length suits your fancy.  I actually had some wooden skewers on hand that worked perfectly because they’re sharpened on one end.

Arrange your snowballs in a vase or Mason jar.  I filled mine with strips of burlap, but you could also use decorative stones, marbles, buttons, dried beans, or even sand.

But, then again, these snowballs are just as pretty without stems at all!  My daughter loved the look of a single snowball on this Mason jar.

In her room she set her Pride and Prejudice snowball on the base of an overturned wine glass.  She plans to add a couple more at different heights.

But these would also be lovely hanging from the ceiling.  Just tie thread or fishing line around a stick pin and press it into you snowball, then suspend it from the ceiling with a thumbtack or a small hook.

And just so you know, the 5-inch ball took me just over 2 hours to complete and the 3-inch balls just over 1 hour apiece, so I didn’t do this all in one sitting.  But it was a fun project to do with Polly Wolly, especially since we were turning our favorite books into something beautiful for our home.

I’m anxious to use the same concept to make an entire wreath.  And I’d love to try using hymnbooks or sheet music.  Or colored maps!  And I may try making book snowball ornaments for the Christmas tree next year.  When you’re decorating with something you truly love, the possibilities are endless.  

Now, I know there’s a box of old books out there in the garage somewhere.  They haven’t been touched in years, let alone read, so I’m thinking they’re perfect candidates for some snowball-making…