Crafts- Sequin Baubles

This is a really simple DIY for decorating your own festive tree. It's also a great activity to do with friends if you want to huddle up indoors with some hot chocolate and keep your hands busy as you chat.


Things you will need-

• Polystyrene balls
• Small pins (approx 1.5cm in length)
• Sequins
• Thread
• Glue
• Acrylic paint or Nail polish (optional)

Both polystyrene balls and sequins are available in various different sizes so you can have small delicate decorations that provide an elegant sparkle or you can have massive baubles that scream 'I AM SHINY HEAR ME ROAR!' from the other side of the room.

I am going for a simple black and silver theme to my baubles but you can go crazy with multicoloured, hologram or layering transparent sequins over the top of coloured ones. I recommend the cupped type of sequins rather than flat ones as they curve nicely round the balls.

It doesn't matter where you start if you just want a single coloured bauble. Place a sequin against the side of the ball and push a needle through the sequin hole. Placing sequins against the ball before you pin them will mean you don't get any small gaps between the sequins which can happen if you try placing the sequins onto the pins and them inserting them into the ball. Repeat this process moving out from the first sequin. 

Keep going until your sequin is completely covered. If you don't like the effect that is created by having different coloured pins to your sequins you can dab a small amount of acrylic paint or nail polish on the heads of the pins before you start.  

For my next bauble I want to use both black and silver sequins to create the effect of silver snow sitting on top of the black bauble. I just eyeballed my pattern but if you want you can draw a snow line on your ball to use as a guide before hand. Start at the bottom with black sequins and cover the ball up to just under the halfway point. From here pick a few places to continue the black sequins up past the halfway point until you are left with only the area you want to cover in silver sequins. I recommend a wavy line as that will give the most natural look. Make sure all your black sequins are in place before you start adding silver sequins as you want the silver to be overlapping the black, not black overlapping silver. 

Now all that's left to do is add a small length of knotted thread to the top of your baubles. I find the best way to do this is to wrap it around one of the pins a few times and then add a small dab of glue over the top of that pin to hold the thread in place. Always make sure that the pin you choose has other sequins overlapping its sequin so that the weight of the bauble is shared out among several pins. This spreading out of the weight should stop the thread pin being pulled out of the polystyrene ball when it is hung up.