Pom Poms Archives - Simple Crafts

Scruffy Cats in Pom Poms & Felt.

October 21, 2013 by Merry Leave a Comment

We love pom poms here but they’ve not been out for a while. Long autumn nights and evenings watching Strictly are here though, which means some winding of pom poms can happen and some cute crafts too. I’m still busy experimenting with making realistic patterns from different wool winding techniques but here are our first two scruffy cats. One has wool pom pom ears and a tail made of strands of wool tied together (Maddy did that one) while Amelie made one with a flat felt tail and felt ears.

On the left is Top Hat Cat. He’s made from two colours of yarn (Sirdar Hayfield Double Knit Acrylic which is easy to use and nice and cheap!) which are wound simultaneously to give a speckled look. Amelie glued an extra large and large medium pom pom together to make the body and added tail, eyes and nose with felt pieces.

It’s always handy to have plenty of felt on hand (I like to keep wool blend felt in my cupboard as it is good for lots of types of crafts but the Dovecraft Acrylic Felt packs are brilliant value for decent felt too). The green scarf was a ‘not quite rectangle’ strip – it had a slight kink in it to make bending round the neck easier. After that we made the hat, which went like this:-

1. Cut out a rectangle of felt to the desired size and overstitch the two short edges together.

2. Place the cylinder on some felt and draw round it to make a top circle.

3. Overstitch that on to one end. Turn it through. The result is suitably scruffy and banged up – perfect for an alley cat.

4. Place the cylinder on felt, draw around it once close to the edge and again with a wide margin (inner circle and brim). Cut out the bigger circle first, then cut out the smaller circle so you have a ‘doughnut’ shape.

5. From underneath, overstitch brim to hat.

6. Cut two slits for ears. Cut out some felt ear shapes in cat colour, poke them through the slits and glue the whole thing to the cats head, making sure you also attach the ears so they don’t float free!

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Maddy’s cat was inspired by an Aristocat and is wearing a beret. She made it with a circle of felt all glued and tucked under into the right shape, with a tiny matching pom pom made from yarn on top. He has pom pom ears (very cute) and a yarn tail.

We’ve got more Cat Crafts on Pinterest and more Pom Pom crafts too.

Pom Pom Flowers

September 2, 2013 by Merry Leave a Comment

It’s been a bit quiet here lately; I took some time out to enjoy my little boy, since he’s growing up all too fast and needed lots of mummy attention but I also found myself (as I’m wont to do) setting up a new shop for all the beautiful craft supplies that I like using on this blog. And that took some time too.

However, the crafting hasn’t entirely stopped and I’ve got plenty of projects put aside to blog about or ones I’m about to make. My trusty army of helpers have all departed for school now, after years of home education and being on hand to craft, so I might have to do more of the leg work myself. I’m pretty sure Maddy will still be on hand to help though.

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Here is a pretty bunch of flowers we all constructed together one morning, combining pom poms and felt flower petals, sat on top of long wooden kebab sticks.

I started off with some simple 6 petal flower shapes with a hole cut in the middle that came from some craft kit or other, long ago butchered and popped into the cupboard as remnants. Popping a pom pom through the middle of this was easy and the stick sits securely into the centre of it too, so no glue really required. Put the pointy end downwards into your vase if you are worried about safely though, or cut it off beforehand.

After that Maddy and I got creative; she hand stitched some clover leaves in green felt and I had a go at machining onto felt too just to try and get my hand in with my new machine. Layers of different shapes put together make for charming (if not terribly real!) flowers and leaves decorated with ric rac can be glued to the back or skewered with the sticks.

We will be back later with a flower shape printable, but for now, one craft for the blog as a signal that we are back!

Easter Pom Pom Creatures

March 25, 2013 by Merry Leave a Comment

Maddy twizzled up a window display in pom poms and foam sheets this week to cheer up the frankly unimpressive winter weather and make it feel a little more spring like at home.

Our trusty pom pom makers (coming soon to a brand new online craft shop near here 😉 are favourites with us and the rabbit and chick are made from the 2 medium large sizes. Any dk yarn will work – Sirdar and Robin do cheap ones. Some big googly eyes glued on, with the head and body also glued together (PVA works well) and ears, feet and beak cut out of foam sheets complete the look. Maddy finished the scene off with foam grass banks and pom poms made in several green, yellow and brown shades to make bushes.

I rather liked the nest – its just the end of a ball of brown wool fluffed out underneath that Easter chick. I have to say the rabbit looks a little nervous, but that is a VERY. BIG. CHICK.

Valentine Pom Pom and Felt Heart Craft

January 29, 2013 by Merry Leave a Comment

I wanted to help a group of girls make something really pretty as a quick craft in a short session this week and came up with this idea.

First each of the kids made a pom pom or two in small sizes, using links and white yarns, or whatever suited their version of romance the best 😉

I then drew some quick heart shapes using a word processing programme (templates to follow) and they cut out two sides of each in felt of their choice. We had threads, buttons and sequins out and the decided each side of the hearts to suit themselves. Decorate each side first, then blanket stitch them together with a little stuffing if you wish.

Once completed, they threaded a bodkin with a cotton based yarn (won't stretch) and threaded it through the hears and pom poms, tied knots below each element to secure them and hung them up. Ideally they will look lovely in a window or below a light shade; we hung these on a door.

You could use ribbon to thread them; in this case place the ribbon through the pom pom before cutting and tying it and place it through the centre of the heart before you stitch it together.

Well done girls.

Chinese New Year Pom Pom Dragon

January 16, 2013 by Merry Leave a Comment

Maddy’s latest make is this gorgeous pom pom dragon. Here are her words on how to make him 🙂

You need red, yellow and blue acrylic yarn and some different coloured pipe cleaners plus something to make eyes; paper, felt or googly eyes will work.

First make 4 medium pom poms, roughly the size of the palm of an adult hand. These pom poms are work out as mostly red, with 1/6 of it wound in yellow. This makes the stripe down his back.

Next make 2 or 3 similarly coloured smaller ones to make the tail, getting smaller as they go along. You can decide how long to make his tail depending on how patient you are. Make another red/yellow medium one to be the nose and a really big one in the same colours to be the head (so, 5 medium, 1 large and 2-3 smaller ones).

Next a thinner pom pom (not too thickly wound) in blue to be the ruffle round his neck.

Now thread yarn through the centre of each pom pom (best to use a thick needle) in this order (medium, large, ruffle,, medium, medium, medium, smalls) and make a really big knot or thread a bead on each end and knot it to make the ends secure.

To make feet, fold a pipe cleaner over the central yarn and twist it round to secure it as two legs, then make feet at each end. You could decorate the feet with felt or foam. Do one set near the head and one set near the tail.

Do similar ones with more pipe cleaners as horns and spikes wherever you fancy. Some between the nose and head look good as whiskers. Finish off with eyes.

We tied some string lengths to places along the central yarn to hold it up. If you attach that to a stick, you get a pom pom puppet!

Pom Pom Snowball Fight.

December 31, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

I saw this idea a year or so ago on Pinterest and will have to find the right place to credit it when I'm near a proper computer but this idea for making a Pom Pom snowball fight tickled Maddy very much when I told her about it and so she made it happen.

It turned out to be the perfect playtime craft for a Christmas Eve, nice and easy so no parental involvement required (if you use the lovely pom pom makers we have) and then ideal for burning off over excited per bed time energy when the stocking are out but sleep won't come!

Maddy made 16 medium sized white pom poms and filled to mini ikea steel buckets with them. Then all hell let loose as they pelted each other with them! The baby particularly liked it and no one got cold or hurt or needed drying out afterwards! Perfect!

It looked pretty too 🙂

Christmas Pom Pom Swag

November 10, 2012 by Merry 2 Comments

This craft is one we did last year and put up at home; I think it was the thing that made me truly fall in love with the decorative power of pompoms. It looked beautiful, far greater than the sum of its £1.50 ball of yarn parts and was one of the things we put away to bring out again for this Christmas. There is something delicious about the mix of colours, the plump pom poms and the non-Christmas theme of it. It really added a chic touch to our very ordinary living room.

We bought about 15 colours of yarn, in big 200g balls of cheap acrylic; each pom pom was made by winding two colours together. The pom pom on each side contained one of those colours, which just gave it a nice gentle changing feel as it went along. Blues, reds, greens, yellows, purples and golds all seemed to work really well together. We used medium pompom winders and did both colours at once, so they were quick and easy to make. We threaded yarn on to a wide ended needle and doubled it twice, so there was a really strong core holding them together and then pushed the needle through the centre of each pom pom.

christmas pom pom swag decoration

This could easily be altered to suit any colour scheme, with metallic threads or other decorations dangled between. It was one of my favourite elements to our living room for all of last Christmas, so much so that I replaced it with a rainbow swag while we waited for the birth of our baby boy in January!

This craft was first featured on Patch of Puddles, our family blog.

Pom Pom Firework Craft

November 2, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

We thought we were up against it with this particular craft but yet again Maddy came up trumps, with a little imaginative help from another sister. So here it is, a pom pom craft for Firework Night 😆

One navy blue or black large popm pom to be the sky. Then take some pipe cleaners and twist them into coils around your finger. Push one end into the centre of the pompom and secure it by bending in over the yarn that holds all the strands together. The yarn will help hold them in place. Make a series of them and hang them in a wreath or at the window. Use sparkly pipe cleaners if you have them to hand or decorate the pom poms by spraying glue and glitter on, or stars or even by using sparkly thread wound in when you make it.

If you remember to leave the yarn that ties it together as a long thread, you’ll have a loop to hold it together. We didn’t, so you get Josie’s fingers modeling this quick and fun bonfire night activity. I think with some glue and glitter and sparkly pipe cleaners, they’d look great hanging in a window as long strands of dangling indoor fireworks!

Halloween Pom Pom Characters

October 4, 2012 by Merry 2 Comments

Last year we had great fun dressing up our window with a combination of gel pens and Halloween Pom Pom creatures. They stayed up nearly till it was time to get festive in fact, since they cheered up the greyness of autumn pretty well.

Pom Pom creatures are great fun at any time but lend themselves particularly well to Halloween. The spider was made by pushing 4 long black pipecleaners through the middle before it was tied off and then some googly, bloodshot eyes were stuck on with tacky glue. By buying cheap acrylic yarn, these are super cost effective and we had several hanging outside the door too. The witch was a bit more complicated; her arm was a long pipe learner glued under her green head (would have been better with small green pompon hands think!) and her nose glued on while she took a quick lie down. Maddy made her hat from fun foam sheets; the cone needed to be held while the glue stuck firmly though.

I thoughts the skeleton had huge appeal; a mostly pipecleaner body with a great big head, eyes and foam mouth.

The vampire bat had foam triangular wings, again glued on with tacky glue, foam teeth and a Pom Pom head and body. He reminds me of the muskrat in the moomin stories.

What better way to do a pumpkin… so much carving saved! 😉

These Pom Pom Halloween characters first featured on our family blog. The window art was drawn with gel pens from our shop.

This craft kicks off a couple of weeks of Halloween crafting on Simple Crafts. Lots of brand new and original crafting being bubble bubbled as we speak 🙂 (but we didn’t think we could improve upon this little bunch of chaps!)

Pom Pom Owl

September 10, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

Last year my girls and I had fun making some spooky Halloween pom pom animals and people. One of the most effective ones was the owl we made, hooooo… (who? hoo? get diddit?) was really too cute to be anything spooky at all.

Owls have been one of the great design icons of the last couple of years and Pinterest is full of them. What I loved about this particular crafty creation was not only how easy it was (and gave us a chance to experiment with using chunks of colours on a pompom) but how easy it would be to customise it to make different owls too. You could really have a hoot designing them.

Ahem.

We used 2 colours of cheap and cheerful DK wool and made a medium and fairly small pompoms (pale green and yellow if you use the Clover makers) and did each one wound with 3/4 of the circle in darker brown and 1/4 in the speckled cream/natural. We used our trust tacky glue to attach them to each other and then cut out feet and a beak in fun foam sheets and added googly eyes. We debated felt wings but decided he was just cute and hapless the way he was.

Have a go – and let us know what you manage to make? We would love to feature your pom pom creatures.

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