The holidays offer ample opportunities for distinctive and DIY Christmas decor. Filling your home with trees, wreaths, and garlands is an annual delight, particularly when you can customize your holiday decorations to fit your existing design scheme and aesthetics perfectly. With this great hack, you can create the perfect mistletoe kissing ball using floral foam or styrofoam and real or artificial greenery for a very low cost, making your holiday as festive as it is budget-friendly.
While you may already be welcoming visitors and loved ones to your door decked in garlands and wreathes, you may be neglecting one key spot and decorative element right above your door — the perfect spot for a bit of mistletoe to celebrate the season and invite all the cheek pecks, quick smooches, or long lingering kisses the love-filled holidays invite. Real or faux mistletoe arrangements are available from home or floral shops, but you can easily make your DIY version for under $20 in materials. You can also completely customize the project, mixing in other elements to make the project your own.
Creating a real mistletoe kissing ball
To create a kissing ball using real mistletoe, use a sphere made of reservoir floral foam to hold water and keep your mistletoe looking good through the holiday season. You can buy the foam already shaped into a sphere or stick blocks together with wooden dowels ($19 on Amazon) or toothpicks, then carve and shape it into a sphere.
Soak the ball in water until it is saturated. Use some sheet moss as the wrapping for your ball to hide the foam and keep it moist, fastening the moss with pieces of 24-gauge wire bent into U-shaped clips. To cover the ball completely, you will need enough mistletoe to surround it, stuck in with more U-shaped lengths of wire or floral pins ($4 on Amazon) until it is completely covered. Create a ribbon hanger by affixing the bottom of the ribbon with wire to the foam and then fashioning a ribbon or bow at the top for hanging.
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While many leave the mistletoe by itself, you can also add other holiday elements, like holly or other berries, twigs, other leaves, and botanical matter, to create a natural lush look. The wetness of the reservoir foam will help your mistletoe stay green and moist for a few weeks during the season.
Making an artificial kissing ball
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While real mistletoe is lovely, it can also be difficult to maintain and very poisonous to children or pets, so it may not work in all homes. Never fear — you can also create an artificial version of this DIY, which allows even more customization options and will last from year to year. Instead of using reservoir foam, use a dry foam or styrofoam cylinder ($5 at Walmart) instead. Stick floral picks directly into the foam for a full and bushy look, or use hot glue to apply vines or greenery as well as winter berries, poinsettias, pine cones, glittering crystals, tiny ball ornaments, and more.
You can also mix other faux greenery in with your mistletoe, like eucalyptus, lamb’s ear, or evergreen pieces. While mistletoe kissing balls are meant to be hung in prime overhead spots to invite smooching, you can also use them in other spots unhung, like as a holiday topiary in a large planter or piled in a large basket or bowl as a centerpiece.
