DIY Nightmare Before Christmas Balls

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Halloween 2020 is going to be a little different at our house.  Normally we get an atrocious number of trick-or-treaters, 1500+!  This year we are blocking off our sidewalk and keeping the door closed, and we’ll be doing our own creative trick-or-treating inside the house: Hubby and I will have a different costume on for each room of the house and the kids will go door to door.  It’ll be memorable, that’s for sure!  The pandemic has not stopped me from decorating the house, though, because we can’t let the neighbourhood down.  Our house is just as haunted as last year (see the pics here), and I’ve even done a little Nightmare Before Christmas décor in the kitchen, too!

One of my favourite things about going to elementary school was seeing the way the teacher had designed the bulletin boards for the upcoming holiday or season, it was always so exciting to see the decorated classroom.  I thought it would be fun to decorate our little kitchen homeschool area, so now my Le Creuset Miniatures Shelf has been haunted!

The Nightmare Before Christmas has become a classic in our home, the kids sing the songs all day long and know all the character’s names.  I had some leftover clear Christmas Balls from an abandoned holiday craft project and figured I’d add a little Halloween flair since, let’s be honest, our Christmas tree does not need anymore balls!  It was super easy and not even that time consuming (bonus!).

Here’s my DIY Nightmare Before Christmas Balls Tutorial, enjoy!

DIY Nightmare Before Christmas Balls Tutorial

Supplies:

-clear Christmas balls

-small funnel

-paint (I just used the kid’s finger paints)

-fine detail paint brush

-black and red permanent sharpie markers

-isopropyl alcohol 99% and paper towel/tissue

-pencil and paper

Directions:

one: remove the lid off the balls and use a funnel to get some paint inside.  I just used finger paint which was way too thick, so I watered it down.  Sometimes I did too much water and it was way too runny and didn’t stay on the sides of the ball, so I’d have to add more paint to thicken it up.  Just cover the opening with your thumb and give it a good shake to get the paint all over the inside.  I then let them sit upside down for a little while to allow the excess paint to drip out.

two: grab your pencil and paper and practice your drawing.  I recommend you do a simplified version of the faces, like I’ve done—go ahead and copy mine!  I just did a Google Image search and tried to find easy faces to copy and simplify.  I found the most important part of all the characters was the size of the eyes; if the eyes are too small, the whole face just looks off.

three: for the light-coloured balls, you can go ahead and draw directly on the ball with your black and red sharpie markers.  Don’t be scared, it’s not too difficult drawing on a sphere!  If you make a mistake, don’t despair, a little isopropyl alcohol on a piece of tissue wipes the sharpie marker right off.  If you are having a real hard time, just do different versions of Jack Skellington (happy, mad, open mouth, etc.) since he is the easiest character to draw.  For the dark-coloured balls, use your fine detail paint brush and paint directly on the ball.  I found that to be harder than the markers, but since I just used finger paint, I was able to wipe mistakes clean with a little water, or scrape it with my finger nail.  Really, it’s not hard!

four: once your paint is dry, you can touch up the paint on the inside if it settled oddly and didn’t cover the sphere perfectly, or just put the tops of the balls back on and you’re all finished!  

Everybody in the house has a favourite ball:  my three-year-old likes the pumpkin, my husband likes the duck, I like Zero because I am admittedly a bad painter and I think he turned out great, and my four-year-old likes Jack and Sally and Zero because she can’t pick just one hahah!  Which one is your favourite?  Let me know in the comments!

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