Decorative Balls

I made the rope bowl a few weeks ago (see it here) and needed something to put in it.  I found this idea on bhg.com and made the fabric wrapped balls.  Unfortunately my laptop fried recently and I wasn't able to recover the pictures I took to create a tutorial.  Laptop is back in business now, but I lost a handful of pictures :(

I ran out of fabric and had one ball left, so I decided to do something a little different with it.  Here's what I ended up with:

 I started with some silver thumbtacks I found at the dollar store (and a Bud Light, hehe)

 I just started at the top and began to work my way down, placing the thumbtacks in a circle around the middle.

I did two "layers" in one direction around the ball, then 2 "layers" in the other direction.  This helps the thumbtacks lay a little better against the ball - plus I think it looks better.  There is a seam in the middle of the ball which was a good reference point to try to keep the circles even.

But it's ok if your circles of tacks aren't perfect, I promise it will look ok!  You can keep going with the circles all the way to the bottom, but I chose to stop here:

You won't see the bottom of it in the bowl anyway, so I chose to save some time and thumbtacks and stop there.  I love the way it turned out and I love the one different ball mixed in with the fabric balls.

                                       
Happy creating, friends!