Christmas baubles

We have a large extended family and, for the first time since we were all kids, we are getting together for a huge Christmas on the Chatham Islands, from where our family originates. As part of the Christmas celebrations, each family (seven families in all) have been asked to contribute a Santa gift up to the value of $20 for each of the children under nine years of age. The problem is, the number of children on the list kept growing and ended up at 14 - $280 in all! Some clever thinking was called for.

My sister-in-law and I decided to make personalised Christmas baubles as our family's gifts. We bought red, silver and gold balls and four different colours of glitter glue. We would write each child's name on the front, then 2009 and Wharekauri (the Maori name for the Chatham Islands) on the back, then decorate the rest. After a couple of practices, we realised this project was best spread out over several days, so today we began by printing each child's name on the front.

This project sounds and looks easier than it actually is. We had several slips of the hand, resulting in colourful and glittery fingers, then discovered that our system of hanging each ball off a coat hanger also wasn't so simple; a few 'bangs' into either the wall or another bauble resulted in multi-coloured messes and some hasty re-starts! Luckily, the glitter wipes off really easily and we could try again without too much fuss.

This is what we envisaged.
(Ours didn't look like this at all!)