Wanna Be Mama MD: Do It Yourself Project #6: Pom Pom Pomanders!

In case you've been wondering where I've been for the past few weeks, I've been making these time consuming pomanders EVERY NIGHT. We're up to 12 aisle pomanders and 8 tent pomanders so we have a loooong way to go on the tent poms!

Like so many other brides today, I have jumped on the pomander bandwagon and have enlisted the effective if somewhat unwilling help of my mother and sister. They're cute, fun and on the whole a much less expensive alternative to floral decoration. I plan on hanging mine from the aisle chairs and from the ceiling of the tent. I also plan on hanging globe lights that I found at Big Lots of all places.

To start, I ordered a giant box of blue tissue paper from papermart. The box of 480 (30" x 20") sheets came to about 30 dollars shipped and I used a portion of it for the invitations so it was money well spent. I also bought some styrofoam balls from michaels, some floral wire and some ribbon. It took a good couple hours to cut it down to size, 10" x 5", on a fairly crappy paper cutter and then began the tedious process of making flowers.

Although these decorations are fairly light on the wallet, they are extremely heavy on time. Each pomander easily takes at least 5 hours to complete and that's if you're working without breaks. This is not a task you should take on unless you have the time to commit to it. I also like my pomanders fairly dense and full instead of spread out, so my large poms take about 70 flowers each with my small poms taking about 40 flowers.

Do It Yourself: Pomanders!

Company: Tissue paper, Papermart
Coupon: None
Cost: ~ $30.00

Company: Styrofoam Balls, Michaels
Coupon: 40% off coupon
Cost: 4" size (aisle) is $3.49 - 40% = $2.09
Cost: 6" size (tent) is $4.99 - 40% = $2.99

Company: Ribbon, Michaels
Coupon: 40% off coupon
Cost: $3.99 - 40% = $2.39

Company: Floral Wire, Michaels
Coupon: 40% off coupon
Cost: $2.99 - 40% = $1.79

Total Cost: $39.26

Step 1:

Cut your tissue paper into 10" x 5" sheets. Use a paper cutter with a stack of tissue for the fastest results though this still takes a while as my paper cutter was too small to accommodate an entire sheet. You should also cut your floral wire into 4" pieces.

Step 2:

Put 4 sheets of tissue together and fold it accordion style from the 5" side approximately 3/8th of an inch until the entire sheet is folded up. Try to keep the paper and the fold even. It's a little tricky but it's not the end of the world if the paper is a bit off at the end.

Step 3:

Fold your floral wire over the center of your folded paper and clamp it into place, either by squeezing it with your fingers or using pliers. You then twist the two wires around each other to create one stem.

Step 4:

Round off each end of the tissue paper with a pair of scissors. It's sometimes necessary to move the stem after this step since once side might require more trimming than the other.

Step 5:

It's now time to fluff the flower so it looks like an actual flower! This is done by spreading out the fold and pull each layer up one at a time. Be careful not to tug too hard since it's easy to rip the tissue layers.

Step 6:

If you're going to use your pomander for the aisle, you should attach a ribbon to the styrofoam ball so it can hang. If you're going to hang it from a tree or inside the tent, you should attach a wire loop so you can tie fishing line to it. The wire loops you just twist and insert with hot glue. The ribbons are best attached by making wire "staples" to hold the ribbon to the ball and adding hot glue underneath it. You should definitely do this before adding flowers since they'll probably be squished while you're attaching the hanger.

Step 7:

Once you've attached your hanger of choice, start pushing the flowers into the styrofoam balls. You can place them closely or loosely together depending on how dense you want your pomanders to be. The closer together you put them the more flowers you'll need so keep this in mind.