We'll make it SNOW up in here!!!

Last year while staying at the 1905 Victorian House at Acorn Hill in Gruene, TX, I found a photo in a magazine showing a stack of snowballs in the window box of an old house and I stole it.  The idea, not the magazine!!  I took a photo of the photo so we could reference it in case we didn't find instructions online (oh ye of little faith; you can find EVERYTHING online!!).  Then, when we were hit with such a devastatingly hot summer, I wasn't sure even fake snowballs could survive, so I filed the idea away and promptly forgot about it.  Until last week.
So yesterday, Sister and I scoured the Walmarts from Waxahachie to Cedar Hill in search of Styrofoam balls and bags of fake snow.  We found what we needed at JoAnns; apparently there are other fake snowball makers out there and they all shop at Wallyworld.

We assembled our supplies on a table near the back door and opened a window to provide the ventilation needed to keep us from getting loopy on the spray adhesive.  If you're going to try this yourself, you need:
Styrofoam balls in assorted sizes
Wooden skewers
Spray adhesive (we had several kinds, but all were ok to use on foam)
A large bag for dredging the balls in the snow
Artificial snow (we had two kinds, but the smaller the pieces the better)
GLOVES
Good lighting and even better ventilation

An extra pair of hands (optional, but recommended!)

Dump the snow into the large bag and shake to distribute evenly.  Make sure you put the gloves on FIRST or you'll figure out you need them as soon as you start spraying adhesive and by then it's a bit too late!!

      







You want to stick the pointy end of the skewer into the ball, but not so far that you have to do anything more than tap it to get it back out.  This keeps you from actually touching the adhesive-coated ball and totally screwing up your nice clean gloves!!
Also, it helps if you have several balls skewered and ready to spray, then you just drop the wet ones into the snow and shake the bag till they disappear to the bottom.
  This is where the extra hands come in.  If one person does all the spraying and the other person skewers and shakes, you get six balls done in a small amount of time.
You may also need to pack your snowballs to help the fake snow stick.  We seemed to have great adhesion initially, but we were dealing with an incoming cold front and as the temperatures dropped the adhesive stopped sticking to the Styrofoam.  It clumped up the snow, so maybe the dredge technique was the problem.


And you will have a LOT of snow sticking to your gloves as you go, so best to leave trying to clean it off till you're finished.

We spread waxed paper on the table and let our snowballs dry there overnight.

Things I learned from this first attempt:

Work slowly.  We waited a bit late to start so we were rushing a bit.  Probably not the best results as a result...

Use the finest snow you can find.  We had the shredded plastic kind and our snowballs look like uncooked coconut macaroons.

And it's probably best to work in daylight, outside, when it's above 50 degrees.  Just sayin...