DIY: Gold Sea Urchins

DIY Gold Sea Urchin Decoration

Some people like to decorate with dried sea urchins, especially if they live close to the beach. It is a fun way to include a little bit of nature into your decor. However, not all of us live near the ocean, and when people use actual dried urchins, the cool spikes don’t always keep well.

Recently, Elle Decor decorated a concept house for Blogfest 2012. On one of the concept home’s walls, they displayed dozens of gold sea urchin-like sculptures. Since then, I’ve seen golden sea urchin decor popping up all over the web. Using this as my inspiration, I decided to pull together a fun little DIY using Smoothfoam balls, toothpicks, gold spray paint, and barbecue skewers. Read on for materials and directions.

MATERIALS:

Toothpicks
Barbecue skewers
Smoothfoam Balls (I used the Smoothfoam balls, they don’t disintegrate when spray painted like the normal Styrofoam balls do. You can find them at Hobby Lobby.)
Knife
Wire cutters
Tacky glue
Spray paint (I like to use the Design Master 24 KT Pure Gold spray paint – which you can find at Michaels)

DIRECTIONS:

Cut the bottom third off your Smoothfoam balls with a serrated knife.
Stick toothpicks all over the rounded part of smallest foam ball, evenly spaced.
For the medium sized ball, snip some barbecue skewers so that they are about 4-5 inches long. Make sure you remove any splayed strands of wood. If you’d like, you could lightly sand any splayed areas.
To stick in the skewers, make a small hole by jabbing the ball with the pointy end of the skewer, take it out, put glue on the other end (that was clipped) and stick it into the hole that you just created. Make sure that the skewers stick straight out from where they are positioned, or else all of the others skewers will be crooked. Repeat this process until the entire ball is covered. Note: try not to make the hole in the foam bigger in diameter than your barbecue skewer, or else you’ll have uneven areas on your foam ball. If this happens, try filling in the “potholes” with glue (or even toothpaste).
Do the same for the largest styrofoam ball, except cut the barbecue skewers so they are about 7-8 inches long.
Once the glue has dried. Spray paint them all with one layer of paint, then when it has dried, cover it with another layer. Continue this process until every part of the urchin is covered with paint.