surprise ball

This seemingly simple concept was totally unknown to me just a few weeks ago. When I stumbled across the idea over @ O Happy Day, I went nuts for it!!! What a fun idea!!! I love love love buying pointless unique little oddities as gifts and this added a whole new fantastic element! I made one for my hubby for our anniversary, and this one was for my baby brother's 21st birthday :)

They're super easy, and the fun part (although it's all pretty fun!) is finding all the little gifts to tuck inside!

I know you don't really need a tutorial for this, but just in case you wanted to see how it all comes together, then you can :)

What you need:

small-ish gifts, or at least flexible ones and at least 10, but it really doesn't matter
crepe paper streamers, the more colors the better!
a label or sticker to hold it all together

a tiny 3 year old helper! (not really, but this is the second one I made, and having her hold the roll of crepe paper while I pulled at it really made the WORLD of a difference in terms of getting twisted and tangled up!)

it only makes sense to me to have the main present in the inner most layer of the ball. in this case, it was a gift card. So you just start wrapping. I use one color per gift and just wrap wrap wrap and roll it some more :) Keep in mind you're ultimate goal is a ball-ish shape.

When you're done wrapping the first gift, just cut the paper and get ready for your next gift. You don't tape it down or anything, just hold it taught until you've wrapped your first layer or two of the next gift. Hold the wrapped and unwrapped gift close together and start wrapping! It's like a big colorful snowball that keeps eating up fun little presents!

Each time you add a gift, try and put it anywhere you might kind of need some extra volume to get your spherical shape.

Towards the end, you can start using big flatish gifts as long as their flexible (sticker sheets, small color books, etc.)

After my last gift, I cut some decorative strips of all the colors just to make the outside pretty and secured it with a name tag (because it was the biggest sticker I had).

Even funner than making these is watching someone unwrap them :) Miss Y was so excited to see uncle open his present that she made him do it right at the beginning of the party :)

Finish it off with a kiss for the helper :)