Sticky Situations?

So, yesterday I did manage to get the pegboard painted and the small fridge that holds worms moved and some more carpet squares down. Now it is just a matter of cleaning up and putting everything away. Seems like everyday I make every effort to clear the surface of the tables in the store. As soon as I get one cleared, the men come in and pile stuff atop it.

When I say men, I mean all of them! If they see a surface uncluttered, they feel it is their duty to create chaos by piling things on it. The FedEx man, the UPS man, the mailman, the kamper man. All men.

I had this idea last year to create giant ornaments out of balls of Styrofoam. I got the idea from Pinterest, lest you think me brilliant. Then I saw the price of the Styrofoam balls, the ones that are about the size of my head. Since I wanted at least 16 and would still have to decorate them and hope the weather would not destroy them, I discarded that idea. The idea lay dormant in my head (as I am sure many things do) all year. But as the holidays were approaching and I lay sleepless with insomnia, I pondered low cost ways to fulfill my desire for giant ornaments.

Balls, I told my sleepless self. Balls that bounce and would never break. I considered beach balls, but figured they would not look like Christmas ornaments. I could spray paint them, but would the paint destroy the integrity of the ball and cause it to deflate? Then there is the wind. We get really big gusts of wind and I pictured the wind tossing beach balls into each other and the paint coming off where ever they made contact with something.

I priced balls at Walmart. The big ones were  out of the budget I had in mind. Off to the Dollar Tree I went. I had purchased a ball about the size of a child's head, to be the head of the child I had locked away in a cage near the witches' cauldron. For $1 each, I bought a total of 16 of those balls. Four each of red, orange, green and blue. I was thinking to use those colors anyway, although I would have preferred yellow, instead of orange.

Attaching a "hanger" to the Styrofoam or the beach ball would have been easy enough. But a ball filled with air would deflate if I stuck something in it in order to hang it. The balls stayed in the bags for about a week while I pondered my dilemma. I ponder things in the night mostly. But sometimes my mundane daily activities will leave me with an epiphany. I decided I needed something that would look like the thing on the glass ornaments that holds the little hanger. I tried the caps from soda bottles, but they were too small. I thought about empty tuna cans, but they were too big …..

Then I was cleaning the kitchen and looking at every lid I came in contact with. I was filling the pill takers for the two of us and ended up with some empty pill bottles. The lids were the right circumference, but lacked the depth and looked odd atop the balls. Just when I was about to give up and move on to another dilemma plaguing my life, I found my solution!! I can thank HeWho thinks we have a maid. HeWho starts his day with a bottle of Ensure now, instead of biscuits and gravy. In true HeWho fashion, he does not dispose of things that he has finished with. He will open it and leave the lid lay on the tiny island in my kitchen that is convenient to the fridge. After draining the bottle he will toss it in the trash. The lid, however will remain there on my tiny island as evidence until I remove it. And there it was, the remaining element I had been waiting to find.

I gathered the necessary amount rather quickly, as he was supplementing his diet with Ensure for awhile. I drilled a hold in the cap and then painted them silver. I chose my glue carefully, making sure it would hold fast to the surface of the ball and after running a length of twine through the hole and knotting it securely, I glued them to the balls.

Another little problem arose, the barcode. It was larger than the cap I was attaching, so that would not cover it. I wondered if the ball surface would hold paint. It does. I chose silver and gold and painted the balls and hung them on the front of the building. I actually hung them, then painted them.

The lids glued on held fine, my twine did not and they hung several days before the wind knocked them around enough to weaken the twine and they began falling. I had to remove the lids to re-twine with a stronger twine and then glue them back on. The silver balls held the paint well. The gold was different. It was automotive paint and was still sticky. Long story, but I re-hung my balls yesterday (you are all free to play with that phrase) and painted the gold balls red. I added bows and am now ready to test a beach ball with paint!!

I have pictures, but my signal is not behaving tonight and I can't add an image to this post. Just use your imagination and trust me when I say they look marvelous!