Being Crafty: Recycled Fabric Flower Ball

I am a huge pack rat.  Not to the point of hording but I definitely like to hang onto way too many things "just in case" we'll need them some day.  Not to mention I'm sentimental about everything.  Have you seen the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma where her friend Miss Smith keeps a pencil stub and a piece of bandage? Yeah...I would have been Miss Smith.

However, despite these vermin like habits (almost worse than an actual pack-rat because I hear they only like shiny things...not positive on this) I was able to do some recycling that enabled me to make something cute that I would like, save money, and use something and not throw it out.

It all started with my lovely white Haines T-shirts. 

Man I love them. So comfy.  So casual.  So cool.  

The 4 shirts that I recycled I had worn lovingly in the DR during my internship...they were looking a little worse for wear. 

So I cut them all up into lots of little circles.

Then I took some scrap cardboard that I had and duck-taped it into a ball.  I had seen a tutorial on how to make flower balls on some girls blog-she used a Chinese Lantern to glue on her fabric. Really though? I didn't have a Chinese Lantern...so all of this project is really recycled.

I cut the cardboard into strips and then rounded them out so that they curved.

Here's my Timmy just hanging out and reading the Drudge Report or checking the news 

while I'm trying to be crafty.

This was a Saturday morning...we were kind of sleepy. :-)

My cardboard and duck-tape ball.  So pretty isn't it?

Then with the magic of a glue gun and after duck-taping all the spaces on the ball closed I gathered my little fabric circles and got to gluing.  

The end result? Wallah!

I braided some silver yarn-thread stuff that I had and taped it down to the ball to make a loop and then did all the circles on it.  I plan on hanging it from ceiling of a future nursery. 

This was a really fun, easy project that couldn't really be messed up-it took a lot of circles (and even some scraps to hide the red duck-tape in spots). 

I'd recommend gluing the circles spread out first and then filling in the gaps.

So there you have it-my recycled fabric flower ball.