Ornament Month! Sequined Ornament

Today's ornament caused me a lot of physical and emotional stress. No - for real!  It is one of those ones that starts out as a really simple idea and then kind of becomes bigger than you expected it to (due to poor planning on my part...)  Anyways, as Monk would say, here's what happened.

I had some styrofoam balls left over from last Christmas so I decided I was going to make an ornament of sequins and pins.  At one point I told my husband this and he said something along the lines of "What does secrets and pins mean?"  I guess I need to work on my enunciation.  Here's the initial supplies I gathered for this project.

1 box of pretty pearl head pins
1 styrofoam ball
2 packets of white sequins
1 spool of ribbon

My ball had a seam around the middle so that seemed (no pun intended until I realized it was "punny") like a good place to start.  I stuck one pin and one sequin into the ball and continued that all the way around.

Like this:

I found it was easier to "stick" my sequins with the pins before I stuck them into the ball, but that is a personal preferance.

It became clear very early on that I was going to have sore fingers from sticking all these pins into the ball.  It was a pretty solid one!  This brings me to "things I would do differently next time #1": Buy a less dense styrofoam ball. 

And Things I would do differently #2 - Buy shorter pins.



Moving on...


Once I finished the first row I added a second row on top of that.  Everything was looking good!

This is where the pictures stop.  This is because this is also where the frustrations start.  That is because about 4 rows in I ran out of pins.  Ummm... oops?

Things I would do differently #3 - buy more than one box of pins.

So I went to Jo-Ann and bought another box of pins.  Yes, only one more.  I don't know why I thought that one more box of pins would be enough, even though I clearly hadn't covered half of my ball yet.

Things I would do differently #4 - buy cheaper pins.

Those multicolored pearlized quilting pins sure are pretty but they aren't exactly cheap!  I was looking for a quick, easy and cheap project to use up these styrofoam balls and this one was not it!  So of course I ran out of pins again and went back to Jo-Ann's and bought 2 more boxes.  Surely this would be then end of my troubles.  Then, about 5 rows from finishing, I ran out of sequins. I mean, this was like maybe a little circle about an inch and a half in diameter left uncovered AHHHHH!!!!

Things I would do differently #5 - buy 2 packets of sequins OR buy bigger sequins.

I happened to be at Hobby Lobby one day so I thought I would buy another packet of sequins there, but it turns out their white sequins are yellow tinted and Jo-Ann's white sequins are pink tinted, so I had yet another trip to Jo-Ann's for sequins.  That makes this 4 trips to Jo-Ann's to finish this ornament.  Do you think I'm a doofus yet?

Here's my final supply list:

1 styrofoam ball
4 boxes pretty pearl head pins
3 packets white pink-tinted sequins
1 spool of ribbon

My original list?  Way off.  I didn't even use the same ribbon.  If you're interested I just attached the hanging ribbon by sticking it under one of my sequins.  This ball is so solid I was not worried at all about it pulling out.  Anyways, I think in the end I ended up with a pretty cool ornament, but I definitely will not be making another - this one came with way too many "I'm such an idiot!" moments. So much for quick easy and cheap!!  It does feel pretty cool to run your hands over all those pins though. Maybe one day I will be able to look at it without any feeling of resentment.  Some day...