Sweetgum Ball Flowers –Springtime Nature Craft

Make the most out of nature and create lovely Sweetgum ball flowers to decorate your home for spring. Collect the fallen balls from beneath the Sweetgum tree in your yard.

DIY DIFFICULTY LEVEL | Easy

Do your Sweetgum trees make you cranky? These larger trees produce magnificent shade and a magnificent mess of spiky gumball-shaped seed pods that leave many homeowners cursing under their breath.

But there are many reasons to love a Sweetgum tree. Aside from the beautiful, colorful fall leaves and beneficial fruit it provides birds and other wildlife with, produced from its seed pods, it is an amazing tree for providing material for craft making.

Ideas for nature crafts to make with Sweetgum pods:

• Ornaments
• Wreaths
• Filler for display bowls for tablescapes
• Garland
• Flower displays for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or even July 4th

Today, I will show you how to make a pretty, dried flower display with these balls. 

The best time to collect the Sweetgum pods is in the late fall after they have dropped. I collected mine in November after a few weeks without rain. So they were already nice and dry.

If you live in an area with a lot of rain, you may want to get them as they fall so they don’t sit in moisture and get trapped under leaves for an extended amount of time.

Materials Needed To Make Flowers From Sweetgum Pods

• Sweetgum balls
• ⅛” Wooden dowels or bamboo skewers, 12” long
• Cardboard boxes (2)
• Scissors
• Pruning shears
• Styrofoam egg carton
• Hot glue
• Glue gun
• Spray paint –purple, lilac, magenta
• Craft or latex paint- any green color
• Foam brush
• Clear vase 6 ½”-7 ½” h, 2 ½” neck, 3″ top opening
• Clear acrylic top coat spray (optional)
• Museum wax, silicone wax or plasticine clay (optional)

Materials Notes:

Clear Vase:
A shorter vase will also work, in that case, you can just trim the dowels shorter to fit. The 6 ½”- 7 ½” size is great for 12” with just minimal trimming for varying the stem heights for aesthetics in the arranging of them.

Wax or Clay:
See Step 5

How To Make Sweetgum Ball Flowers

Step 1. Free The Balls Of Debris And Dry Them

First, gather the Sweetgum tree balls. You’ll need between 15 and 25, but 25 will be more than enough unless you are using a larger/wider vase.

There are a few ways to clean the balls. Before working with them, you’ll want to remove much of the debris from inside the holes. There will be plenty of seeds and maybe critters sheltering inside.

They need to be dry so the debris inside will loosen. They also need to be dry before you paint them. First, set them on newspaper or cardboard for 24-48 hours to air out.

Some somewhat warm places, like a garage or even a covered porch, will work, but preferably not inside your house. Many sheltering bugs will vacate if put in a warmer spot.

After they have dried and the bugs have left, sift them in a cardboard box. 

The easiest way is to use a plastic bag and two cardboard boxes. First, put all the balls into the bag. Bring them and two cardboard boxes outside.

Depending on how many Sweetgum balls you have, place some or all into one of the boxes. You don’t want too many more than enough that will cover the bottom, so you may need to work in batches.

Gently shake and sift the balls in the box to loosen the debris. Then, transfer those balls to the second box and do the same.

Use the plastic bag to dispose of the seed debris from the boxes after each sift instead of emptying it onto the ground. This will prevent you from having lots of new Sweetgum saplings next year grow in places you don’t want them.

It may take up to a handful of sifting before the majority of debris is gone.

My critters were gone when I brought them inside to work on them, but if you still see little bugs, you can do one of the following. 

Heating

Put them on a tray and bake them at 200 degrees for a few hours. Afterward, you will still need to sift them to remove any remaining debris (see above).

Freezing

Put them in a plastic bag in your freezer, freeze them overnight, and then sift them afterward (see above).

Pro Tip:

I keep a portable hand vacuum nearby when making my flower displays for the few seeds that might come loose while working with the balls.

Step 2. Trim The Stems

I used pruning shears to trim the stems since they will be needed in a future step, but scissors work just as well. Some stems twist off with your fingers, but I found most needed trimming.

Step. Prep The Stems For Painting

Use a bookbinding awl or similar type of tool to poke holes in an egg carton. This will help hold the dowels upright for drying when you paint them.

Even though I only used 18 stems in my arrangement, I made extra holes in case I wanted to add more. It may be a good idea to do a few extra if you want to add more stems to yours.

Step 3. Paint The Stems

Use a foam brush to paint the dowels. Paint as far down the dowel as possible and stop where you’re holding it. Then, insert it into one of the styrofoam holes.

By the time you finish each one, it should be dry enough to pull it out and paint the unfinished portion. Then, place the dried, painted side back into the carton holes to let the freshly painted portion dry.

Step 4. Paint The Sweetgum Balls

Put on a pair of gloves. Then, lay the balls on a flattened piece of cardboard and apply the spray paint.

It was easy enough to spray the area facing up, rotate them, and spray again rather than wait for each side to dry. Because they are so pointy, not much paint was transferred to my hands when I touched them, so I didn’t wait. I just went ahead, rotated them, and sprayed again.

It took 3-4 rotations, but they were fully covered with the spray paint in less than 5 minutes. If you are doing multiple colors, repeat this for each color. 

After all the balls are fully painted, wait until they are dry enough that the paint doesn’t rub off before moving to the next step. In dry, 75-degree weather, this took less than 10 minutes for me.

Step 5. Create The Flower Arrangement

While I’m not a professional floral designer, I find the design more aesthetically pleasing when the stem lengths are varied.

If your vase is the same height and neck width as mine, you may want to consider stem lengths between 8 ½-11”. However, keeping them a little longer than this might be a good idea until you have a good feel for how you want them to look.

A good way to test your design arrangement is to place the balls on the sticks and trim as needed.

The balls tend to fall off easily. So to help temporarily secure them, you can add something waxy, like museum wax, silicone wax, or plasticine clay, to the tip of the stems before inserting them into the holes. 

One tip I have to offer is that the smaller balls will look more natural on the shorter stems.

When ready, use pruning shears to trim the stems. 

Step 6. Attach The Ball To Its Stem

Once you have settled on your stem lengths and design, add a drop of hot glue to the tip of the dowel, then insert it inside a hole in the ball to secure the flower stem. Repeat for each.

Step 7. Add A Protective Coating –Optional 

If you want the Sweetgum ball flowers to last for years, return the glued balls with stems to the styrofoam holder holes and spray both the flower balls and stems with a clear acrylic top coat.

Some other fun projects you can make using nature items from your yard are a grapevine wreath and hanging basket planter. And you may also love this gorgeous, nature inspired set of lush moss wall art.

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