Disco Balls with Old CDs

This seemed really simple at the time, but I’m glad I tested it out before unleashing the teens on their supplies. The basic idea of the craft is to cut up old CDs and glue the pieces onto a Styrofoam ball. I’ve seen them done before and they’re very pretty. I had two major issues with this project:

1) Have you ever tried to cut up a CD? It’s HARD. I broke a pair of scissors and my hands were sore for about two days afterwards. Sometimes as I was cutting, the little shards would skitter across the room. It was dangerous! So I spent about two days pre-cutting the CDs. If I’d had the teens do their own cutting, we’d have been there all day (and we’d probably have a lawsuit).

 

When cutting your shards, try to make them as uniform and small as possible. Some of the pieces were too big, and the end product looked very un-ball like. It actually looked like a weapon.

Here’s where my second gripe comes in: The glue. This is not a project I’d host for tweens because we had to rely heavily on hot glue. Of course, if I had a set group of crafty tweens who could handle a glue-gun, I might reconsider. However, everyone pretty much needs their own glue gun. It’s not like with some projects, where they can work on their projects and then see me for a dollop of hot glue from a gun I control. (I swear I’m not a control freak…)

The teens had a fun time doing it, but it was time consuming, messy, and a little bit frustrating for them when they couldn’t find the right-sized pieces to fill in gaps between the shards. I really like the recycling aspect of this craft, but in the future I would consider buying pre-cut mirror mosiacs.