Flower Balls?!

    
     Well apparently my family thinks that I'm creative.  Whether I believe it or not is besides the point!  My youngest sister has asked me to help her decorate the church for her July wedding.  I am truly honored that she thinks I can do it, but woa, making some hair clips and skirts is nothing compared to preparing the church for my sister's wedding.  I mean girls dream about their wedding and want the day to be perfect.  Can I do it?  Well she seems to think so!  So we'll see how it turns out.

     My sister is what I would call a modern twist on the traditional bride.  She is incorporating everything traditional into her wedding, but making it her own.  For example, she has a beautiful white dress and is wearing purple (her wedding color) shoes!  I LOVE this.  Her wedding is going to be beautiful.

     So back to the project.  Instead of pew bows, my sister would like to do pommanders.  Yea, I hadn't heard of them either.  I had to google the word just to find out what they were!  I hope that isn't a sign about how my decorating will go.  

     A pommander is basically a ball of flowers with a ribbon attached.  They look really classy.  I went out and got a bunch of purple flowers.  I live near a pretty big city and looked all over for dark purple flowers.  I couldn't believe how hard it was to locate them.  So I bought what I could find to make the sample.  I also thought about using tissue paper, coffee liners, or even cupcake liners.  We'll see what she thinks and make changes if necessary. 

     Here we go with the tutorial.  I got this three pack of floral foam at Walmart for a couple of bucks.  To make the pommanders, I'll actually cut them in half, so the three pack turns into six balls.  Or more if you choose to make small pommanders.

     





     Don't mind all of the gunk, we used these when putting up drywall!  After you've got your square blocks, then shape them into a circle.  It doesn't have to be perfect, because the flowers will be hiding the imperfections!  Thank goodness. 



Not even close to being circular!

     I then took the ribbon and cut it to the desire length.  I took wire and put it around the ribbon.  I used 26 gauge, because that is what I had on hand.  But I would recommend stronger gauge, the wire kept getting bent when I put it into the green foam.  Eventually I got it to go straight...after putting several holes into the foam.  Thank goodness they'll be covered up!

      After you've got the wire through the foam, keep pulling until the top of the ribbon is inserted into the foam.  I guess it's not really necessary, but I thought that it made the ribbon look nicer. 

    

   To keep the ribbon from slipping out of the foam, I used a popsicle stick!  You could use anything handy.  I cut the stick to the desire length and wrapped the wire around the stick.  Then I trimmed the wire and stuck the ends into the foam.  I don't want any little fingers getting poked.  Especially mine!

     I used my wire cutters and separated each stem from the bunch.  I trimmed each stem to the desired length.  Don't cut too much off, because once it's short there's no making it longer!  I pushed the leaves up to the top of the stem.

     

     Then you just start inserting the flowers.  I put in quite a few random ones and then filled in the holes.  The whole project took about 15 minutes.  I'm sure it will go much quicker after the first one.  I like how they turned out.  I really wish I could have found some more natural looking flowers, but I worked with what I could find.  So, what do you think?