Erica at Honestly…WTF has a nice tutorial on how to make pretty "Surprise Balls," which are balls of brightly colored and decorated crepe paper that contain multiple goodies in the layers of wrapping. I want one filled with dark-chocolate covered coffee beans.

Prepare the supplies by cutting the fine crepe paper, lengthwise, into three 1″ strips per color. When picking out the toys, candy, and surprises, be sure to select an assortment of sizes from larger round shaped items to small flat items. Start by wrapping the largest item. Work in a criss cross pattern to cover as much surface area as possible.

Visit her site for the complete step-by-step

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

TAGS: family

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http://twitter.com/randywalters Randy Walters

I’m just going to sit back, and watch the snappy rejoinders arrive.
- Repurposed
  
  It’s been a couple of hours – either we’re all too classy or we’re just not as snappy as you suspect…
  - http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist
    
    It’s for boingboing family so the snappy replies may have been unsnapped by mods.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Nope.
http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist

Dear mods,

I am a faithful BB reader and enjoy the RSS feed but am not interested in the new family specific content. Additionally, all of the responses I can think of for a post titled “How to make surprise balls” are not appropriate for a family site. Are there plans to eventually split family content away from the main site after testing it on the general audience?

Regards,
Amanicdroid
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Ask Rob.
- oasisob1
  
  Good point. I realize that many of us BB commenters don’t really consider what’s appropriate when posting comments. Perhaps the lesson is for families to view the family content TOGETHER!
  
  Oh, or a button to show/hide comments, which defaults to hiding.
- ChickieD
  
  If they were to flag the “Family” content by, say, including “Boing Boing Family” in every family related headline, maybe that would be enough to get commenters to show restraint when something as tasty as “surprise balls” gets included in the headline.
  
  I think the commenters here care enough about the site to play nice on a “Family” tagged thread. We can be all dirty minded on other posts.
  
  That being said, since Boing Boing also posts NSFW content at times, splitting out a separate site might be a nice way of isolating inappropriate content from children. Also, people who use contents blocking browser software for their kids might find that the site is blocked to their children because some content is not child appropriate.
  - http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist
    
    I suspect that the high quality of comments/commenters here are due to the faithful mods. You make an excellent point with the content blocking nannyware.
http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

I’ve been arrested.
ohbejoyful

I love making these. I initially got the idea from Not Martha and have been honing my own special style for everal holidays since. I get almost much fun making them as the kids and yeah, grow ups, have unwrapping them.
ohbejoyful

Meant to add the link to Not Marth’s site;iPad isn’t letting me edit my post: http://www.notmartha.org/surpriseballs
echolocate chocolate

Surprise balls on the internet!
- Brainspore
  
  What’s surprising about balls on the internet?
  - echolocate chocolate
    
    The surprise is that these ones are wrapped in crepe paper.

How to make surprise balls

Read more in Family at Boing Boing

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