Tennis Ball Snowman Wreath

We have a new tennis ball snowman wreath on our door. It’s actually the wreath that I made earlier this year, just upcycled even more. Remember this?

A funny story about this wreath is that one of our trick-or-treaters saw it hanging on the door, pointed and asked why we had a Christmas thing on the door for Halloween. I responded by saying that our wreath wasn’t Christmas, it was tennis – and tennis season is all year long! But, the kid’s funny comment made me wonder if I could change it into a Christmas wreath. I thought tennis balls are shaped like snowballs, so maybe it could make a snowman. Here’s what I did to transform the yellow tennis ball wreath into a snowman. First, I tried spray painting the wreath white. Spray paint doesn’t stick to tennis balls. See? This is after two coats of spray paint and it still looks yellow.

So, I moved on to plan B, which was use some old paint that we had in the garage that was leftover from some ancient project. It was really old paint, and super clumpy. Those tennis balls absorb a lot! I guess when I think about how wet they get when dogs play with them, it makes sense, but I wasn’t expecting them to slurp up that much paint. Here is the wreath after one coat of paint.

After the first coat dried, I could still see the black words stamped on the balls.

I gave it a second coat of paint and that covered up the black words better. I must tell you that the wreath is much heavier now that it has absorbed so much paint. The balls are also not squishy anymore, because they have a hard shell. To make the eyes, I drilled holes in two more balls, just like I did in the original wreath tutorial. For the nose, I used a box cutter and cut out a piece of a tennis ball into a triangle. It’s kind of a curved triangle. I used a wire hanger and threaded it through the eyes and nose, then wrapped the ends around the wreath.

I used acrylic paint to paint the eyes and nose. I added a hat and a scarf from the dollar store. For the hat, I just put it right over the hook I already had at the top of the wreath. I didn’t need to cut a hole in the top of the hat. For the scarf, I just tied it around a couple of the tennis balls at the neck of the snowman. Here it is: Christmas and tennis at the same time.

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