Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Tutorial for making flower balls and a florist bow

Flower balls (or pomanders, which is their formal name) are pretty fun. They can be used to carry in a wedding for flower girls and even the bride and they can be used for fun decorations.
They also are inexpensive and fairly simple to make.

Not long ago Keren, my kids and I had fun making some and Keren took picture so I could do a tutorial.



1 Step: Gather your supplies. You need a Styrofoam ball, flowers like button mums or daisies (and more than is in the picture), corsage pins, a knife (or something else to cut the flowers off the stems), ribbon for a handle and a bow, a pair of scissors and a hot glue gun is nice for attaching the ribbon.Step 2: Make the bow.
A. Pinch about 4 inches from the end of the ribbon in between your thumb and fingers. With your other hand pull the ribbon around to make a loop and then pinch the end of the loop with the start of the loop between your thumb and fingers.B. Now make a loop on the other side and bring the ribbon back to again pinch between your thumb and fingers. Make one more loop on each side (for a total of 4 loops) the same way.
C. Make the middle loop by flipping the ribbon over your thumb and squishing the ribbon between your thumb and fingers again. (this is a fairly short loop)
D. After making the middle loop make 2 more loops on each side like in step B. (There will be a total of 9 loops, 4 on each side and one in the middle.)
E. Make another loop similar to the middle loop but much longer. This will be cut in half at the bottom to make tails. Now take either a wire or a ribbon and thread it through the bottom loop and the middle loop and around the side loops and tie it tight in the back. This keeps your bow together. Now you can cut the bottom loop in half to make tails and you can also cut the bow off of the spool of ribbon (you can leave about 4 inches to create another tail). Your bow is done.
Step 3: Glue a ribbon loop and your bow to the top of a Styrofoam ball.Step 4: Get your flowers ready by cutting the heads off of the stems.
Step 5: Poke a corsage pin through the center of each flower and then pin it into the ball. carefully cover the whole ball by poking flowers in.
Step 6: Spray with Crowning Glory flower solution to make it last longer or even just water will help to keep it fresh longer.



It is all ready to be carried.


You can also make the pomanders without the bow and just attach a single ribbon that can be tied somewhere for decoration.


However you do it, I hope you have lots of fun!

1 comment:

Mia's Classroom said...

These are so beautiful! I just love the all green one. I am going to try a few, not because I have a wedding coming up, but because they make me happy!

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin