Money Ball – Unique way to give money for graduation and birthdays

My mom gave me an enormous roll of plastic wrap and suddenly I am wrapping everything in it. Really, there isn’t anything you can’t make more fun by wrapping it in plastic wrap. For example, a plain old gift card is boring, but a giant ball of money and plastic wrap is exciting! If you are looking for a fun way to give money for graduation or birthdays, it doesn’t get better than a money ball.

When kids are getting ready for college, I really like to give money for graduation. They have so many new expenses and it is nice to help out a little. But money feels like such a boring gift. I like that the money ball makes it a little more fun!

Money Ball Tutorial

You make the money ball the same way I did the candy ball, but you use money instead of candy. It is kind of like the grownup version of a LOL doll. The money ball is also the highest form of “pain-in-the-butt wrapping jobs” I have ever seen. It takes forever to get the money out. Totally wicked.

I didn’t want to risk paper money tearing, so I headed to the bank and cleaned them out of dollar coins, and then got the rest of the money in 50 cent pieces and quarters. If you wanted to be truly wicked, you could go with even smaller coins.

You start the money ball by wrapping a coin with the plastic wrap. Then you add another coin on top and wrap some more. Every few coins, I would wrap around the ball once with packing tape. Just enough to make it so that they can’t just unravel the ball. Then you add more coins and wrap and tape until you run out of money.

The trick is to keep the pieces of plastic wrap and tape short enough so that they can’t just unwrap the whole ball at once by unrolling it. Depending on how evil you are, you can make it harder or easier by how much packing tape you add.

Then to make it more festive, I wrapped it in ribbon, much like you would do a ball of yarn. If you are making this for a graduation gift, you can wrap it in the colors of their high school. The money ball wasn’t very big, but it was so heavy! If you want to make the ball bigger, you could include candy in it as well. If you use individually wrapped candies, you wouldn’t have to worry about the money making it dirty.

I made this one for my sister-in-law and the look on her face when she unwrapped the money ball was priceless!