A friend of mine pinned an awesome wreath she found for sale by 1BabyToes1 on Etsy for $45 to one of my Pinterest boards, hoping that we could make it together. To be honest, I put her off for several weeks because I was scared to drill a hole in a baseball… I had visions of it flying off the workbench across the garage and shattering something! All my anxiety was unfounded, because it turns out, it was harder to bend the wire hanger closed than to do the drilling. For those of you who have baseball teams still in the running for the World Series, this might make a super nice gift for your hubby, or something you can do together if he is particular about his power tools. As an added bonus, you can buy all the supplies locally.. yes, even in Leesville!

What you need:

11 baseballs

1 wire hanger

1 foot of thin ribbon in your team’s colors

1 yard of thick ribbon in your team’s colors (or burlap ribbon like we used)

1 wooden letter to represent your team name (other fonts available on-line and at craft stores)

Acrylic Craft paint in your team’s colors

Acrylic Spray Sealant (any brand will do)

Hot glue

2 pairs of heavy duty pliers

Electric drill with ½ inch drill bit

Scrap wood

Safety Goggles

Paint the letter in your desired color scheme. I recommend doing both front and back and using at least two coats of paint. For dying the front side, you can stick the tall thumb tacks into the back side to elevate the letter and minimize any lumpy paint along the edges. Once dry, spray with the sealer following manufacturer’s directions. Apply at least two coats, drying completely in between applications.

Wearing your safety goggles, hold the baseball down firmly against the scrap lumber, with your hand shaped like a ‘c’. Starting slowly, push the drill straight down into the ball, until you get the feel of it.. Use an up and down motion to pull some of the cork out of the hole you are creating, or the drill will get bogged down. You will feel a change in pressure when the drill goes out the other side and into the wood. You’ll see, it is so much fun; you might want to do more than just 11, but restrain yourself because if you use more than 11 balls, the wreath will be too big to hold its shape.

Straighten out a wire hanger and thread the balls on to it. You will probably want to do this part in the garage, as there will be a decent amount of cork that comes out during this step as well. Once all the balls are on the wire, twist the wire closed. This does not need to be pretty, but I do recommend getting any sharp edges tucked in and / or snipped off. You want to get the balls as close together as you can. Using at least one pair of pliers is helpful here.

With the wide ribbon or burlap, make a bow, going around the twisted ends of the hanger. You can ruffle the long ends of the bow by tucking them between the balls and hot gluing when you get it how you want it.

Finally, depending on the letter used to represent your team, you can make a loop with the thin ribbon to hang the letter from the large bow (as we did with the “C” for Cubs… now you know why I’m not overly excited for the World Series). With some letters that don’t have a closed top (W, H, I, J, K, etc…) however, it will be necessary to glue the loose ends to the back side of the letter, after the ribbon through the large bow.