Mosaic Bowling Ball Yard Art

Bowling balls are one of the easiest things to turn into upcycled junk art for your garden.

And they are readily available at thrift shops and yard sales.

Way back when I first started blogging, I showed you how to turn a garage sale bowling ball into a piece of yard art. In that case, a penny bowling ball.

(Instructions for making the penny bowling ball can be found HERE)
I think bowling ball yard art has a sort of cult following, because that post is by far the most Googled of my posts and brings quite a few people to my blog.

This summer I decided to make a slightly different version of bowling ball yard art.

MOSAIC GARDEN BALL SUPPLY LIST:

(This post does contain some affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure policy here.)

Bowling Ball
Mosaic Glass Flat Gems
Jennifer's Mosaics White Powdered Grout
Dap White Kitchen and Bath All-Purpose Adhesive Caulk
Dap Clear Silicone Rubber Sealant

I picked up a bowling ball at my local thrift store. Bud's ball, to be exact.

Some "gem" stones from the mosaic and glass tile aisle at my local craft store. I used approximately 6 bags of these.

I started off by filling in Bud's finger holes with some wads of paper towels until there was about ½ inch still open and then I topped that off with regular old caulking.

Bud had some huge fingers and I didn't want to use up a whole tube of caulking, so that is the reason for the paper towels.

I just used the stuff you would use in a bathroom to caulk around a sink or tub or baseboard molding.

I roughed the ball up with sandpaper a little just to give it a better tooth to grab the glue. I used DAP's Clear Silicone Rubber Sealant for Doors and Windows as my adhesive. Since this was going to be placed outside I wanted something that was waterproof, plus would set up quickly.

Then I glued my gems on to the ball.

This took me two months.

A person with more patience and less ADD could finish the gluing in less than two hours though. And most of that time would be waiting for one section to set up before you go on to the next section.

I decided to grout this ball, so I bought a small tub of powdered grout made for indoor/outdoor mosaic projects.

I split the grouting up into two halves.

I grouted the first half by spreading the grout over the gems and pushing it down between them. I let it dry for just a few minutes and then ran a damp sponge over the gems to get the vast majority of the grout off the TOPS of the gems (you leave it in the grooves and sides though).

If you let the grout dry completely on the tops of the gems, it will be very hard to get off later.

When the grout was completely dried, I used a clean dry cloth to polish off any haziness caused by the slight grout residue.

Then I flipped the ball over and grouted the rest using the same technique.

After it was dried, I applied some grout sealer.

And then it was good to go.

I had thought about making one with pebbles on it, since The Dollar Tree has bags of them for $1.00.

But I don't want to become the lady with all the bowling balls in my yard. Then I'd have to change the name of my blog to House of Bowling Balls and there would be a lot of work in making that change.

Can I tell you that I had second thoughts about ever posting this project on my blog.

I couldn't decide if it was cute, weird or tacky? So be gentle with me.