Kissing Balls for Christmas: DIY

You can make your foyer extraordinary with traditional "homemade kissing balls". Mistletoe appears in doorways and corners during the winter holidays. It is part of ancient decorations and rituals.

Freshly picked evergreen branches, twigs, and vines were woven into wreaths and garlands. They add festive touches to doorways, railings, and chandeliers. Bringing greenery such as mistletoe, holly, and ivy into the home now of year was a Druid heritage. They did this to welcome wandering nature spirits seeking refuge from the cold and dark.

We suggest diversifying your Christmas decor with a kissing ball.

You need a couple of tools, branches of mistletoe, and a good mood. The whole process takes about an hour. So it is quite a fast craft. Read more about how to make round flower balls.

What are Kissing Balls?

Christmas will pass much more cheerfully. Apply an old English tradition to wreaths!  Fresh Christmas kissing balls are an old romantic custom. According to a strange belief, any young man and girl who happened to be under a Christmas mistletoe wreath had to kiss! Now we have transformed it into a beautiful New Year's decoration. The ball made of mistletoe symbolizes a new beginning for the young and a strong relationship. 

Within a hundred years, the tradition had spread so widely that in Victorian Britain, a girl who refused a kiss under the mistletoe could not be off the bride list for an entire year! It was a serious threat in those days. People were getting married very quickly in those days. And a year's exclusion meant that one could be a spinster.

Nevertheless, a certain romantic flair accompanies kissing balls for Christmas to this day. You can see it in many family films. For example, Harry Potter's first kiss was under a mistletoe wreath.

The History of Christmas Kissing for Balls

Originally, in medieval England, "sacred branches," consisting of intertwined evergreen branches and supporting figures of the infant Jesus or holy family, decorated doorways outside. During the holidays, making Christmas kissing balls hung at the entrance of the house as a sign of goodwill for visitors. It was a sign that their hosts would greet them with a friendly hug.

After a period of unpopularity, the holy mistletoe branch returned from obscurity. It had a new look and name. The ball has now turned into an apple or potato garnished with greenery and foliage. People choose different plants on each homemade kissing ball  for their beauty and symbolic meaning:

• Lavender and rosemary meant fidelity and dedication, while thyme encouraged bravery.
• Mistletoe is a popular decorative symbol of great luck and fertility.

Dancers waltzed under a kissing ball with a sprig of mistletoe for a light kiss on the cheek. And unmarried women waited for potential suitors. Eventually, mistletoe sprigs replaced all other greenery. They became a permanent symbol of the holiday magic we know today.

Americans in the nineteenth century also learned about mistletoe and openly welcomed the tradition.

How to Make Christmas Kissing Balls?

For DIY Christmas kissing ball, prepare a good mood as well as tools:

• pliers
• needle-nose pliers

Materials:

• a ball of floral sponge with a diameter of 10 cm;
• half a meter of florist wire or you can take a thin wire for beading;
• one meter of red satin ribbon;
• approximately seven pieces of 15-cm mistletoe sprigs;
• approximately 50 to 60 9-cm sprigs of rosemary;
• 15 stems of red roses;
• tiny bell (optional);

For making another version of this amazing decoration we will need:

• pins;
• moss;
• small decorative holiday bells (about 30-40 pcs.);
• decorative sewing pins with pearl heads (about 30-40 pcs.).

Then follow our simple steps to make fresh Christmas kissing balls:

1. Soak a floral sponge in water.
2. Cut the herbs and shrubs into pieces about a finger long.
3. Take the ball out of the water and put it on a towel. The ball should be wet but not dripping with water.
4. Using needle-nose pliers, cut 6 cm of wire. Twist a loop on the tip of the line.
5. Pass the wire through the center of the flower foam ball until the wire loop touches the bottom. Measuring 9 cm from the balloon, thread the bell on the wire and make another loop as in step 4. You must make a loop at the 9 cm mark. The bell is visible when you hide the ball under the branches. The kissing balls for Christmas must be held securely between the two wire loops, leaving no room for movement.
6. Insert the mistletoe, rosemary, and roses into the balloon. Distribute the plants evenly. Make sure that each stem is firmly secured in the foam ball.
7. Carefully move the bow you made in step six to be on top of the balloon.
8. Prepare a decorative red ribbon for making Christmas kissing balls:

• Cut a 75-centimeter length from our 90-centimeter piece. From it, make one big loop of a total length of 30 cm (with this loop, you will be able to hang our balloon);
• Put two small 15-centimeter loops under the large loop;
• Make "tail" from the remaining 15 cm piece of ribbon and place it under the first ribbon. 
• Join all the loops of the ribbon together with a thin floral wire, twisting its ends well. 
• You should get a bow with a loop and two ends.
• Pull the ribbon through the first loop you made and tie the ends together in a small bow.

1. Pass the wire that binds the ribbon through the floral sponge for homemade kissing balls. The wire should go straight out the middle of the decoration and out the opposite side of the ribbon. Twist this end of the wire so that the ribbon bow is firmly attached to the balloon.
2. You can attach a decorative chime to the free end of the wire to secure it. If you only have mistletoe to work with, you do not need to soak the floral sponge in water because cut mistletoe does not need it.
3. Now, with the help of pins, attach the pieces of moss to the fresh Christmas kissing balls. It should be completely covered with moss, without any gaps. Now we have such a "mossy" moss ball.
4. Cut branches from the mistletoe shrub to a length of 5 cm. We will need about 100 such branches to cover the entire ball. Each branch, as a rule, branched out into 4-8 more branches, giving volume and depth to our ball.
5. Mistletoe branches are inserted into the ball, piercing the moss and fastening in the  floral sponge. Beginning this is done from the bow and moves down to the bells. If the sprig of mistletoe does not pierce the moss, push it away with your finger or make a slight depression with the tip of the scissors.
6. Continue working until you have kissing balls for Christmas wholly covered with twigs. If you don't have enough flowers, you can substitute twigs of pine, holly, or other trees and shrubs of your choice.
7. At this stage of the work, the mistletoe ball will look very attractive. But with some details, we can give it an even more ornate and festive look. Insert decorative pins into the bells. You can drop a little glue in each bobblehead to securely hold the pins.
8. Insert the pins into the mistletoe ball so that the pearl pins and holiday bells are visible through the mistletoe. You'll need about 30-40 of these pins, but you can use more - it will be even more dressy and fun.

Bottom Line

Now, our homemade kissing balls can be strung on a big ribbon loop, for example, in the front doorway. We think that this decor will definitely attract the attention of your guests. The decoration will retain its freshness in a cool room for two weeks. Turn to our store for more Christmas bouquets, and have a great holiday!

carrusel_1

FAQ

Read also: