Marble Planets

I recently got interested in globes. Old fashioned globes, globes of the moon, and tiny globes. And I wondered, how does one make a globe? It turns out, all you need is a ball, glue, and some "gores." No, not like guts. A globe gore is just a spherical map that has been printed flat, which can then be cut and pasted onto a sphere.

Isn't our solar system beautiful? I decided I needed some mini planets. You can print the attached PDF and use with regular marbles, one mini marble, and one masher. (Marbles are not standardized, so it may not be a perfect fit.) Or, you can download the folder with the InDesign file and scale the images to the correct size for your spheres.

A Google image search of "globe gores" will come up with all kinds of gores, which you can scale to fit any sphere and print. The length of the gore needs to be the same as the circumference of the sphere. I measured the diameters of my spheres and calculated C=πd. If you want to make your own gores, you can upload a texture map (google "planet texture map") into this gore generator I found: https://www.winski.net/globus-projector/simplified/

Color printer

Good scissors

Glue (Elmers is fine)

Marbles

Aluminum foil (optional, for the bases)

Use a good color printer.

This is the fun/tedious part. Cut very carefully along the edges of the image.

Apply a thin line of glue to the blank side of the gore. Wrap it around the marble and press. Spread glue on each of the open ends of the marble and press the tips of the gore down. Be careful not to smudge the ink with excess glue or glue on your fingers.

20 minutes should do it.

Using aluminum foil, make little ring stands for your planets. You can check out my aluminum ring instructable here: https://www.instructables.com/id/Hammered-Aluminum-Foil-Rings/

Thanks for joining me! I hope you had as much fun as I did.