Curbly

How To: Make DIY Urchin Starburst Sculptures for Under $5.00!

Hi Curbly! I'm excited to be back again for the 3rd day in a row! OK so as the above photo suggests, Monday's successful wall art diy has made me even more obsessed with creating complimenting pieces in the starburst/urchin genre... and a recent visit to my local $.99 store made it easy for me to just go with it! I found the most amazingly shaped crystal picks (they have a very cool graduated triangular shape at the ends that adds so much more dimension than your usual bamboo skewer!). And you can't beat the fab price of ninety-nine cents for a pack of one hundred.  I think my little vignette (above) looks pretty awesome!

Here's what you need to create the same look:

• play dough (or the generic "colored dough" from the 99 cent store like i used)
• acrylic crystal picks (the ones that I used were Diamond brand)
• styrofoam ball (mine is 3" diameter)

Directions for the shorter half starburst/ urchin (cost - $2):

1. Roll a can's worth of play dough into a ball and flatten the bottom
2. Push the crystal picks (I used 100) into it to create the urchin look (I actually think it looks pretty awesome with the clear acrylic picks as is... and I don't know about you but I LOVE things that look like lucite...)                                            
3. Spray paint it (I used the left over gold metallic Rust-O-Leum spray paint from Monday's project and this kept my cost super low!)

*note that at the time of this post (36 hours after the DIY) the play dough has not hardened completely yet but it holds the picks really well and I anticipate it will likely harden in the coming days and be that much more awesome!

Directions for the full standing starburst / urchin (cost $2.50):

1. I pushed the crystal picks into the styrofoam ball, covering it (be sure to press them in as far as you can so that they are strong enough to hold the weight of the piece while standing (I used about 200 picks).
2. Spray paint it the color of your choice (again, I think this looks pretty cool in it's clear state but for this project I covered it using the same can of metallic gold paint)

And don't ya think this would make a great Christmas tree star topper as well??? 'Tis the season...

They are pretty fab grouped together! I am not sure where their final home will be... they may live in the space I am designing that will house the rest of my coming starbursts but, then again, in the top photo they really compliment a bedroom wall paint job I did a few months back... Hmmm... I may have to make a few more and scatter throughout my place.  And I'm not gonna lie, I've already made another trip back to the 99 Cent store for more packs of those crystal picks! I can't wait to use them for other projects!

Hopefully you all are feeling a similar love of starbursts this week...

Until tomorrow.....

Holly Westhoff is the founder adventures of an almost 40 year old intern where she chronicles her experience of starting over from exec to intern and also share lots of intern budget-friendly projects. (She works for free).

Tagged : How-To, decor, Craft, Christmas, Holiday, urchin, sculpture, starburst, Curbly-Original, DIY