DIY Bride Part VI: Pomander Balls
Pomander balls, also known as kissing balls, are the bane of my existence at the moment, but hopefully they will make a big difference in dressing up our wedding venue. What started out as an idea of hanging a few colorful balls from the ceiling ballooned into me making nearly 30 pomander balls in a variety of sizes and colors.
As for making pomander balls, it's basically a 4-step process: cutting, dyeing, wrapping, and assembling. Dyeing and wrapping are by far the most time consuming and frustrating.
Cutting is relatively fast. I like round petal shapes, but since the papers are squished together, they all look good.
Dyeing is the best part. I loved playing around with various colors to get various shades of red, pink, peach, and blue, but drying often took several hours.
Wrapping is the part I dread most. Since I tried to use all parts of the coffee filters, in some cases I had small flowers plus an extra ring that I ended up using. The flowers are pretty easy to handle. I just poked a toothpick through the center, put some glue on the inside of the flower, twisted the outside then taped it with floral tape. By the end, I wasn't even using floral tape. The flowers seemed to hold with just some glue between the toothpick and flower. For the rings, though, they're easier to handle after cutting slits into them throughout. That way, after they're wrapped, it's easier to pull the paper apart to simulate petals. These rings look more like tight roses, so they take up a lot less space, meaning you have to use a lot more of those flowers to fill a styrofoam ball.
Assembly is fun but requires getting a feel for how close together the flowers need to be in order to look full but not so full that you need a ridiculous number of flowers to fill the ball.
This all started when I began looking for cheap, simple decor that I could make myself. My sister actually made a few of these for her wedding 5 years ago using tissue paper. I read online that people make these out of coffee filters that you can custom dye to any color you want. Since I had a bunch of extra coffee filters in the kitchen, I decided to give it a try, and the first few turned out beautifully.
My wedding coordinator liked them so much that she encouraged me to make 20 in different sizes and colors. I obliged. Nearly 1,000 coffee filters, 800 toothpicks, 30 styrofoam balls, and several bottles of food coloring later, I am done. Some co-workers helped cut coffee filters and wrap them, but I did a lot of this on my own, nearly rubbing my finger pads raw at times. I suggest finding many friends to help you out with this project. It makes everything go much, much faster.
My original plan consisted of a few pomander balls in bright red, pink, and peach. This then became a series of paler-colored balls, including white ones.
As for making pomander balls, it's basically a 4-step process: cutting, dyeing, wrapping, and assembling. Dyeing and wrapping are by far the most time consuming and frustrating.
Cutting is relatively fast. I like round petal shapes, but since the papers are squished together, they all look good.
Wrapping is the part I dread most. Since I tried to use all parts of the coffee filters, in some cases I had small flowers plus an extra ring that I ended up using. The flowers are pretty easy to handle. I just poked a toothpick through the center, put some glue on the inside of the flower, twisted the outside then taped it with floral tape. By the end, I wasn't even using floral tape. The flowers seemed to hold with just some glue between the toothpick and flower. For the rings, though, they're easier to handle after cutting slits into them throughout. That way, after they're wrapped, it's easier to pull the paper apart to simulate petals. These rings look more like tight roses, so they take up a lot less space, meaning you have to use a lot more of those flowers to fill a styrofoam ball.
Assembly is fun but requires getting a feel for how close together the flowers need to be in order to look full but not so full that you need a ridiculous number of flowers to fill the ball.
Voila! Now repeat 30 times...
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