This would have been pretty cheap if I had already had a soldering iron. BUT, I have this thing about new crafts that I've never done before. So instead of buying the soldering iron and required 50 plastic cups, I bought 100 cups and three different strings of light. And then, after making the first one, I went out a couple of days later and bought even more tumblers and different kinds of lights and wound up spending around $100 for this project (of course, I now have enough materials to make several balls. It was SO worth it, though! This is a really fun project, not difficult, but a little patience is required. There's something incredibly magical about a Sparkleball. I found inspiration for this project and tutorials at Sparkleball.com