How to make a pompom!

It's PomPom time!

I saw a tree in my local town covered in pompoms recently! Amazingly I had some free time this Christmas, so I decided to make a pompom in the same way I did at my Grandma's house when I was younger. So here is my recipe for lovely pompoms.

Tools

Pen/pencil

A pair of scissors

A pint glass (to draw around - or to contain liquids)

50p coin / Glue stick (or similar circle shape to draw around)

Materials

A big ball of leftover wool (I used black and yellow for a bumblebee but you can use whatever you'd like)

Thin-ish cardboard - I used an Amazon packet

2 googly eyes

Superglue

Card/paper (glittery card/paper makes nice wings)

How to make a pompom 

Step 1: Take a pint glass and some cardboard. Use the pint glass to draw 2 circles with a pen or     pencil (the shape dictates what diameter the pompom will have). Cut out the cardboard circles.

Step 2: Cut a central hole about the size of a 50p using some good sized scissors. It can be a bit tricky so get an adult to help! ;) The cardboard doughnut needs to be a good thickness (but the thinner the cardboard the larger the pompom will be, because you can wrap more wool around it).

Step 3: Take the two cut-out cardboard doughnuts and put them together like this.

Step 4: Make a few balls of wool that are small enough to fit through the cardboard doughnuts holes. I probably used 5 by the end (3 black, 3 yellow).

Step 5: Tie the TWO cardboard doughnuts together with the end of one of your small ball of wool and start wrapping the wool around the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 6: Well done! It's looking good so far! (Pat self on the back) Make sure that you wrap the wool around until you can't see the cardboard. Try and keep it even so the stripes will come out even. (If you are doing a plain pompom or using multicoloured wool it won't matter so much).

Step 7: (Can you tell at what time of year I made the pompom?!) Tie the black wool to the end of the yellow wool and keep "wrapping." It doesn't matter where the knot falls but if you can make it near the centre/edge of the woollen doughnut you can snip it off later.

Step 8: Keep wrapping the woollen doughnut until it's black (I was impatient but it's worth persevering for the stripes!). Knot in another of your yellow wool balls and wrap it until it's yellow. Keep doing this until there is no hole. Towards the end you'll just be pushing strands of wool through the hole which means you're nearly on the way to finishing your pompom! Yay.

Step 9: Put a pencil through the middle of your wool doughnut to hold the strands of wool in place. Now cut around the edge of the pompom until you can see the cardboard doughnuts.

Step 10: Almost there. Careful now. Get a strand of wool which is long enough to encircle the circumference of the cardboard doughnuts. Slowly poke the strand of wool in between the two cardboard doughnuts and keep doing this as you cut the woollen doughnut. Try not to cut the woollen strand while you're doing this.

Step 11: Now that your strand of wool encircles the pompom, wrap it around a couple of times and make a knot so that the pompom does not fall apart (they get stressed easily). Cut the cardboard doughnuts and pull them away from the wool.

Step 12: I used googly eyes. the sew-on ones are quite good as you can easily tie them to the pompom. I just used superglue here.

Step 13: Make sure it has a loop to hang it somewhere. As it's Christmas, I put mine on the tree and gave him some paper wings. I just cut them out of a white sheet of A4 but you could use card or even glitter paper!  

Step 14: EXPERIMENT!!! Hack your pompom and find out how it works. Here are some ways to make different coloured/patterned pompoms...