Moxie Fab: Decor to Make the Season Bright!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I get started early on Christmas - but not this early. When I saw the week of Holiday Cards & More challenges posted on Moxie Fab World, though, I knew I had to get cracking. I had ideas, dang it, good ideas, and you can't win if you don't try, right??
And now we're at the very last few hours to enter the contests, and I'm squeaking in right under the wire. Again, anyone who knows me, knows that I work best at the very last second. In this case, it wasn't so much the making of them that was last minute, but the taking pictures. As you'll see, not only was I delayed in taking the pictures, but interrupted too!

So, the making-of details: ingredients are...3-inch styrofoam balls; Aleene's tacky glue; one package of tissue paper (20 sheets); length of sheer ribbon (per ball); straight pins. Using my Cuttlebug and standard circle Nestabilities, I cut out roughly 12 kajillion circles from the tissue paper, using the #2, 3, and 4 dies. I cut through 10 sheets of tissue at a pass. Then, by hand, cutting 4-6 circles at a go, I cut a swirl for a rolled flower. There are a lot of tutorials for these - the one I learned from is by Joanne Basile. Given the thinness of the tissue, it crumpled beautifully - sometimes a little too much. I found it easier to apply the glue to the ball & then press the rolled flowers into the glue, rather than applying glue right to the tissue. Sadness lies that way. After getting about halfway around the ball (and wondering why, exactly, I hadn't bought the smallest size ball), I tied a double knot in the sheer ribbon, poked 3 straight pins into it, covered them liberally with glue, and sunk them as far into the ball as they'd go. After letting that whole thing dry, the next day I was able to completely cover where the ribbon was attached.
After the entire ball was covered and dry, I got foolish & decided to do two crazy things - make another one, and cover the first one with glitter. Not glitter glue, which I could understand, but loose glitter, which is the colour I wanted. Martha Stewart fine crystal glitter, applied by cautiously painting the ball in segments with the tacky glue, sprinkling the crystal glitter on, shaking off the excess...dropping the dish to catch the excess so that my living room and cats all sparkle... I don't think it comes across in the photo, but the glitter was such an incredible joy to apply that only one of the balls has glitter on it (although, my guess is that plenty will rub off onto the second one simply from being in the living room...)
xoxo
Jessi