People quite often ask me what to do with their spare wallpaper. My first thought is 'you have spare wallpaper? My second thought is 'you must be better at wallpapering than me!'. But of course I import and sell wallpaper so am naturally supposed to be good at hanging it......
I have two replies to the question of 'spare wallpaper'.
The sensible answer: 'Put it away in case the wall is damaged in anyway'. You would be surprised at how frequently designs go out of print. So if your beautiful wallpaper is damaged it is quite often impossible to replace it. In fact I am supposed to recommend buying an extra roll for this very situation - but it often just sounds like a hard sell, so quite often I don't suggest it.
The fun answer: Make decorations of course! How cool would you look if your Christmas decorations matched your feature wall? If your baubles echoed your hallway or your dingly danglies reflected the aura of your home? Why you'd be the envy of every Home & Garden writer!
Of course dealing with wallpaper everyday I often request samples just so I can cut them up and often I fail miserably so once again I am forced to be sensible and say 'practice on plain paper first'. Also when using patterned paper it is easy to become a little cross eyed.
One of my triumphs, (I know this because none of my visitors ever comment on my failures) is the wallpaper ball. It looks fantastic and according to my crafty friends is really easy to do. Actually I didn't find it so easy at first, but once I figured it all out haven't looked back. In fact a friend of mine has made a giant one for her kitchen light shade (she made it out of plain printing paper but it would look so much better out of wallpaper of course).
You will need scissors and paper. No glue necessary.
The idea is to cut 12 identical shapes
Download the PDF templates here:
Large ball (10") – print/cut 12 sheets
Medium ball (5") – print/cut 2 sheets
Small ball (3") – print/cut 1 sheet
Large ball (10") – print/cut 12 sheets
Medium ball (5") – print/cut 2 sheets
Small ball (3") – print/cut 1 sheet
Cut the shapes out neatly. I found that cutting just past the end of the slit gave me more flexibility, but my friend found the opposite, so you may need to experiment a little bit. Use the slits to join petals together. Keep adding shapes, connecting as you go, so that every petal is connected to another on the neighboring flower.
I made the mistake of using one shape as the centre and then adding the remaining shapes around it so that it resembled a 'sun'. This is not how it is done, and it took me nearly eight attempts to finally get it. If you look at the photographs of the ball you will see that it is really connected in groups of threes (difficult to explain but if anybody gets really stuck and needs help let me know and I will post some 'construction' photographs).
I also take great pride in the fact that I placed some of my mothers really ugly Christmas baubles on the inside and constructed the paper ball on the outside giving it more strength and solving the problem of what to do with the ugly 'baubles'. Another idea to make them more permanent is to cover the shapes when they are flat in clear cover seal or contact. I did make a few of these out of plain scrap book paper but they were a little flimsy which is why wallpaper is so perfect.
Here is the link of where I got the original idea from.
Good luck and have a Merry Christmas from The Inside.
Hi Rebekah, thanks for this lovely idea. I don’t have much wallpaper but do have a few calendars coming to an end so will try making one from some of them. A couple of my calendars are made of light card and have 12 lovely theme related pictures or photographs so this should give an interesting effect. I now just need the spare time to do it!