Teach Me Tuesday: How To Create Your Own Alphabet Spheres

Welcome to Teach Me Tuesday! I spend a lot of time each week reading all of the great DIY tips out there in Blogland. Because there are so many fabulous projects that I can’t wait to try, I figured that it would be fun to feature some of my very favorites here each Tuesday.

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This week’s edition comes from the ever talented Holly at Homebody Holly. I think Holly and I were separated at birth – she loves to visit thrift stores, spends way too much time writing on her blog, and has a great husband who supports it all. She does have three kids to my one, though, so her life must be even crazier than mine!

There are many fun reads on Holly’s blog, including a super cute shower curtain giveaway (Hurry! You have two more days to enter!), an ode to a great clearance shopping experience at a favorite store of mine (and no doubt yours), and tons of yummy-looking recipes.

However, out of all of that wonderfulness, there is one blog entry that really stood out to me. Holly figured out how to make her own version of those ridiculously priced alphabet balls you see everywhere for just a fraction of the price. I love them and know you will, too.

Holly explains:

A couple of months ago Dixie and I were in Pottery Barn and saw a display with some ceramic alphabet balls. I don’t even remember looking for a price, but they are not on the website, so apparently are not available.

We both loved the look and started brainstorming about how to create such a thing. Dixie thought of ping pong balls. I ran with that, and remembering some rub-on letters that I had, gave that a try. It worked great!

The next day Craig asked me to spend an online gift certificate we’d had for a while. There were only two stores that I recognized that accepted it; one was Coldwater Creek, so I started there. I couldn’t believe it when I stumbled upon their Word Play Letter and Number Spheres! On clearance, no less!

I don’t know what it is about these, but I. love. them. They’re just so cool! Dixie and I ordered a large and small set of both the letters and numbers and divvied them up.

I thought I’d go ahead and try one of the ping pong balls, just to give you the option of making them if you wanted to.

I got the little package of ping pong balls at Walmart, but they have a logo on them. If you were going to do this for real, you would want to get blank ones.

I cut out the rub-on letters individually, held it down sort of curving around the ball, and just rubbed it on with the stick. If you look closely at the top photo, you can see that each ceramic ball has the letter several times. Six, to be exact; four around the diameter and then one top and bottom.

Next, I gave it a few coats of glossy ModPodge. You can push a pin into the ball and use that to hold it while you brush on the ModPodge.

I then stuck the pin into some floral foam to let it dry. Obviously, if you were doing a bunch of these, you would need a lot of pins and a lot more foam to stick them in. Really, it could be anything that would support it and allow you to push the flat end of a straight pin into it. Maybe clay or playdough.

Maybe even a pan of brownies. Or in this case, what’s left of the Easter carrot cake. Well, it would give you an excuse to bake some goodies!

Here, I’ve put the ping pong ball in with the ceramic ones. It’s the ‘U’ on the top left. If it wasn’t a slightly different typography, I don’t think you could tell! This was really quite easy, and you could make a bunch of them without too much effort.

Oh, Holly. Be still my heart. I LOVE these. I’m positive my 3 year old will love them, too, as he’s very obsessed with his ABC’s and 123′s right now. This is a awesome example of kid friendly decor. Zack couldn’t do much damage to them and he’d have so much fun playing with them. I’m definitely adding them to my list of things to make!

Hurry over to Holly’s blog and check it out (and enter her giveaway!). I promise that you won’t be disappointed in what you’ll find!

Tagged as: Children, crafting, crafts, Decorating Inspiration, DIY, Do it Yourselfer, Inspiration, Teach me Tuesday, Toddler