Making juggling balls

  Remember these? Surely you had these as a kid?

  You need-round balloons, rice or millet (millet works better, buy it from feed stores), plastic bags and small rubber bands.

   I worked out around 100g of rice made a nicely sized ball for us. You can go quite a bit bigger, but not too much smaller-you need to keep the balloons taut. Unless you buy smaller balloons.

  Get your plastic bag in one had like below, pour the rice in…….

……..tie up firmly with a rubber band (these ones are horse ones, which incidentally work really well for small plaits in hair and making dreadlocks), and trim bag. But not too short-best off to make it longer and turn it back over the bag of rice. Make sure it’s very secure, unless you like rice strewn through every crevice of your house.

   Cut the neck from your first balloon……………

………..and stuff the bag of rice in, rubber band end first.

Time for the next layers-cut holes in your next balloon so your original balloon will show through in places. Just one or two, and cut a couple more in each layer so it progressively shows more of the colours underneath. Cut the neck off too-I nearly forgot that it was so obvious.

  Stuff it in, making sure the hole in the first one is covered, and voila! Keep making as many layers as you like. I generally keep to three as a minimum as they stay together better.

  

  Make lots! Don’t limit them to juggling either, they make excellent eggs for your lawn clippings nest.

Then when you’ve finished with them feed the rice to the chooks-you don’t have chooks? Get some!