Baseball Bracelet

This project is the closest I have ever come to making something myself that I have ever come so far on my blog. The idea stuck out to me because it was ingenious and simple, and very unique.
You start with a baseball, and make sure it is one you don't want to use again. If you buy one new from the store you can skip the first step and start making the bracelet. Because I decided to use one of the many baseballs we have from when we were kids, it needed some deep cleaning first. When I tried just washing it with water, it still had some discoloration to it, so as the internet crafter I have become, I googled how to clean old baseballs. I found a simple process on Wikihow that took about 2 minutes and only used a teaspoon of toothpaste.              
Get the baseball slightly damp and cover it with a thin layer of toothpaste. Let it sit for about a minute, and while you're letting it sit, dampen a metal scrubber (the kind that you use when cleaning pots and pans) with warm water. Use it to scrub off the toothpaste  and then wash it with hot water. My baseball showed major improvement. In two minutes it went from this:
  to this: . If you don't have the resources to buy a new baseball or just have some lying around that you know you'll never need, I suggest doing this before making your bracelet to give it a cleaner look.
Now that the baseball is clean you can start making your bracelet. Use an Exacto knife to CAREFULLY cut the part of the baseball with the red strings away from the rest of the baseball. You may have to use the knife to gently and once again CAREFULLY pry the skin of the baseball off the insides. It should come off in a circle and look something like this:
 . Keep the strip with the red string through it, but throw away the rest of the ball.
Cut a strip of the circle so it a line instead. Unthread the red strings about half an inch up both sides of the strip. You can either braid the strings or just tie the ends. The finished product is your bracelet! Tie the string together around your wrist for a unique and sporty accessory.

Side note: like I said at the beginning, I used an old baseball we had used before and cleaned it before starting yo make the bracelet. I would suggest buying a new baseball because what I didn't expect was that the leather was also dirty on the inside after I pried it from the inside. I ended up having to wash it again, and even after I did, it still felt grungy on the inside. It would save you effort and make your bracelet feel cleaner if you bought a new cheap baseball at Walmart instead.