Question:
How to make your own stress balls ?
Answer:
A great and wacky gift for someone who has everything, or for people who
you don't want to give something really big to. These squishy balls
feel great to squeeze and you can make them into people too, by adding
faces. You could even try to make them look like the recipient, eg hair
colour, glasses etc.
You will need:
Dough:
1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour
1 T oil
1 t cream of tartar
1 Cup water
(or you can use bought playdough indstead)
Other things:
Balloons - 3 or 4 for each ball
Plastic eyes }
Felt }Optional
Pipe cleaners }
Mix dough ingredients together it a pot and heat until doughy, stirring
all the time. This should only take a few minutes. Remove from pot,
knead till smooth then leave to cool for about 1/2 an hour.
Now comes the fun part! Take 3 or 4 balloons and cut most of the neck
off each one, so you just have the round bit. Now take a ball of dough
about 2 or 3" across. The more you pack into one balloon, the less
squishy it will be.
Stretch one ballooon over it. This can be a bit tricky. Now quickly
(before it all oozes out again) put this inside another balloon, hole
first (so that the second balloon covers up the hole in the first one).
Put this inside another ballon in the same way.
After you put the last one one, use your nails to pinch up a little of
the LAST balloon only, ie go only through one layer. Then snip this
using scissors to make a round hole. Do this several times all around
the ball so that the previous colour shows through and makes polkadots.
You are now ready to add a face, legs, whatever with a glue gun if you
want to. Or you can just leave it plain so it's easier to squish.
You can always look up old Usenet articles at:
http://www.dejanews.com
If you use their power filter (which is a search engine, actually), you can
type in the name of the newsgroup, as well as the sujbect (i.e. "stress
balls"), and retrieve all the articles. If you don't use the filter, look
under hobbies, then more hobbies and eventually you'll find this group.
Follow these same directions but use a small bean (like split peas)
and these make cool juggling balls for the kids on your gift list
(sets of three)
