Bowling Ball Turned into a Garden Gazing Ball

Regular garden (pun is intended) variety bowling ball!  I got my trusty bright pink Valspar spray paint can out and proceeded to spray away!  It took two coats and some patience!  You can only paint half the ball at a time.  In our area the humidity is high, so it took me two days to get this ball painted and then dried! 

I stuff the two finger holes with paper and then put silicone glue on top of that & tried to get it as smooth as possible. Come to find out that once I grouted the ball, messy is not an issue!   I left the thumb hole for a solar light.

I began gluing my flat bottom marbles as close as I thought they needed to be.  I started at the bottom of the ball around the solar light hole and worked my way around from there.  I used approximately 100 flat bottom clear small marbles and 20 large flat bottom clear marbles.  Again this takes time as you can only do a section at a time.  I let my marbles dry over night.  

The silicone can ooze out from the marbles, because the grout will hide that. 

I used almost a whole tub of the Mosaics grout by Jennifer from Hobby Lobby.   Since I was going for the "Pink" theme I thought I would use some food coloring in my grout.  It worked out really well, or so I think is has (more on this later).  Follow the instructions on the grout label.  It is again tedious, but well worth the extra mixing and cleaning for the end product.  I used about 8 drops of food coloring per batch I made.  This food coloring ads liquid so remember to take that into account when mixing.  I added my coloring first & then I added the water!

I grouted the bowling ball per the instructions on the tub and found that it was really quite easy.  It turned my fingers pink from the food coloring, but that came right off after a few hand washing's.  Something I have learned since doing this ball while I was researching different/cheaper grouts when I read that... food coloring will not work.  I will say that the grout in this ball is getting lighter and lighter.  I am not sure if that is from it completely drying or if it is fading.  I am sure that once it sits in the sun it will fade.  I will be doing another gazing bowling ball this week for my Mother, and will be testing paint in my grout.  I will update if this is a good or bad thing!  I also learned that there are different kinds of grout for different projects!  

Voila!  

The pink gazing bowling ball.  I made this ball for our annual "Swing for a Cure" golf tournament.  Fourteen years of raising money for women in our County that cannot afford a Mammogram.  It was used in the raffle drawing & my good friend Dede Truitt took her home!  I can't wait to go visit her in Dede's garden!  

Items needed for the project:

1 Bowling ball. Mine came from my good friend Fay Burke!

1 can spray paint - your choice.

100 small flat bottom marbles - or more if you want a thinner grout line.

20 large flat bottom marbles.

1 Tube of Dap 100% silicone.

Paper for the finger holes.

1 tub of  Jennifer's Mosaic grout.

1 bottle of food coloring - optional at this point as I do not know if this will last or not!  

1 Solar light

1 old glass ashtray for a stand while I was working on the 

gazing ball.