As some of you may remember, I completely transformed my living room at the beginning of the year by building a faux fireplace, complete with a faux fireplace insert. I’ve been enjoying it every since and now I finally get to decorate it for the holidays! I love hanging stockings on the mantel and thought it would be fun to make my own DIY Christmas stocking holder with stuff I had around the apartment: a styrofoam ball, fur and some scrap wood. I wasn’t sure how it would all turn out but it all came together and I absolutely love it!

For the base, I used a scrap board of 2” x 3” that I had left over from another project. I covered the ends with iron on wood edging to make them smoother and sanded everything.

Since I had some white outdoor stain on hand, I used that to finish and protect the wood.

To spell out JOY, I bought the J and the Y from the craft store for about $2 each (on sale) which I painted with some acrylic metallic paint (champagne gold).

Since I already had a styrofoam ball and left over fur from my furry ottoman project, I thought it would be fun to make a fur ball for the “O”.

I cut strips of the fur and glued sections onto the styrofoam (I used all purpose white glue), overlapping the seams a bit. I experimented with a few different shapes but in the end I just cut small pieces and carefully overlapped the seams to create a seamless look.  It was a bit messy but in the end I was able to cover up the entire ball.

The ball did have one rough spot but I covered it up with a lid from a candle that I had on hand (I used a glue gun to glue it in place). It provides a nice flat surface to secure the ball to the piece of wood.

I used removable double sided tape to secure the ball and the letters to the wood base – this way it will be easy for me to change things up next year and do something else to decorate my stocking holder.

Before attaching the letters and the fur ball, I screwed on 2 white hooks that I had on hand. I chose knit stockings that also had fur to keep the fur ball company and I’m in love with how the whole thing turned out! I added some twinkle lights and the wreath I got from Target.

The only downside to this project is that the stockings can’t be filled with heavy things as the stocking holder isn’t weighted. You could add some more removable double sided tape to the bottom to keep it in place or you could also drill holes and add fender washers to add some weight. But other than that, I’m happy I decided to make use of that ball and fur –  I had no idea how much joy a fur ball could bring me haha!