How To Tutorial: Flower Pomander Ball

You've seen them at bridal showers, streaming from banquet hall ceilings and decorating table centers everywhere.


But how do you make one?


It's even easier than it looks and is the perfect project to share with your girlfriends and/or kids!  


Make it a group effort and you'll have tons of these flower balls done in no time flat!


Here's what you'll need:

• Flat bottom coffee filters (tinted filters work great for 'vintagey' affect)
• Hot glue gun
• Small decorative brads
• 2"-3" Circle or Scallop Punch
• Ribbon
• Spray Mist
• Styrofoam ball(s)

Step #1:  Fold your coffee filter in half twice - making a triangle shape

Step #2:  Feed the triangle shaped filter through the punch.  Take your time.

Step #3:  Punch out the shape.  If you've folder the filter correctly, you should have 8 individual punch-outs.  Pile them on top of one another and punch a hole in the center using a hole punch.  Repeat this 3 times for 1 flower.

Step #4:  Stack the three piles of eight punch-outs making sure to align the center hole. You're going to hold them together using a brad:

Step #5:  Begin 'pinching' each layer up over the center brad:

You'll end up with something that looks like this:

Whew!  You're almost there!  Stay with me - 

Step #6:  Here's where the artist in you gets to shine.  Starting from the bottom of the flower - just start flattening and adjusting until it begins to resemble something 'floweresque':

Cute, right? :)  You could stop right here and add it to a frame, layout or finish it off by hot gluing a safety pin to the back to make a quick broach or attach it to a headband - but we're on a flower pomander ball mission!  So let's keep going - 

Step #7:  For a 4" ball - you'll need approximately 20 completed flowers.  Spritz them randomly with your favorite dye mist to coordinate with your event theme.

Step #8:  Go hot glue crazy!  Begin adhering the handmade flowers to the styrofoam ball.  You can opt to attach a ribbon to hang the finished ball or make various sizes and place them in bowls to use as center pieces.

Hint: The 'Pomander' part means it should smell good - you can add your favorite scent to the finished project (I LOVE jasmine and lilac), but do it sparingly. :)

You can do this same concept using other types of papers.  Click HERE for more ideas.  As always, we love hearing your comments.  Let us know if you plan on trying this project!  Thanks for reading!

ACherryOnTop.com

Meet Our July 2011 Guest Paper Creative Team Member!

Our July Paper Guest CT:  killarney_rose , got to work with the K&Company Abrianna  line.  And she did an awesome job with it! 

         

My name is Kim and I am honored to have been chosen as GCT for July! I was so excited when I received the offer all I could do was point as I handed the lap top to my husband, LOL! He's like 'WHAT!' LOL! I'm just speechless. My wonderful husband Larry and I celebrate our Silver Anniversary in August. 

We have two children, Lynn, who is working on her Masters of Agriculture Education at Texas A&M Univ. and James, who is working on his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at University of Houston. Larry and I are self-employed with two businesses. Larry manages our Oilfield Business and I manage Flying J&L Ranch. 

I have my dream job as a farmer! I am surrounded by cattle, horses, donkeys, dogs, chickens, a cat and an abundance of wildlife. There is always something to take a picture of at the ranch. It’s hard to choose between my boys (bulls) or calves as my favorite subjects. 

I am a huge fan of K&Co. embellishments and not so much the paper. In fact I've only purchased 4 or 5 papers in almost five years of scrapping. I narrowed it to two pretty quick and decided to sleep on it. I had a vision when asked to be GCT to see if I could show diversity in whatever I was able to scrap with. 

It truly has been one of the very best experiences to use this line in my scrapping! I took my desire to challenge myself one step further with this line in two areas. I could only use cardstock as an accent. Also, I wanted to make my own flowers which is so very hot right now.  

 

The end of May I found a stamp at ACOT that perfectly fit a very special gift I received for Mother's Day last year. I fell hook line and sinker as soon as I saw this cow at a Texas Longhorn Sale a week before Mother's Day. Purple just seemed to fit, the touch of orange absolutely perfect! Add some pink for the cow and blue for her bull calf. 

A touch of glimmer glam to the photos mats and a little curling to the corners and I have the dimension I was searching for without it being too drastic. I took the 'Picture Perfect' sticker, attached to a piece of cardstock, fussy cut it out and used some pop dots to lift it off the page. And the stamp is just perfect as she will live up to her name, Scaredy Cat.

I love how the stamp was presented in the package and chose to use it this way for the title.

 

The versatility of Abrianna shines with working on a heritage layout! The portrait of my mother taken just before she turned two in October 1935. This photo must have been an incredible portrait when new. 

I put this one together so quickly. A little punching and fussy cutting enabled my handmade flowers as my border to be made in minutes. A little hand stitching gave me the elegance I wanted in my eyes. My favorite layout using Abrianna! I have to do more heritage work with my leftovers if my daughter's threat to abscond with everything will take a while to materialize!

 

Thank you ACOT for allowing me to play with this beautiful line from K&Company!!! 

Products Used:

      

You can view Kim's complete article by visiting our Resources Page.

Paper Crafting With My Mind's Eye Happy Go Lucky

Posted by SarahA (Sarah):

I loved the new Happy Go Lucky line from My Mind's Eye, but was a little hesitant about all of the purple. Most scrappers I know say that purple is hard to work with or a color they use the least and I'm the same way. Another concern I had was having photos to coordinate. I ordered anyway and I'm so happy I did! 

 

There are also a lot of blues and greens in this line, and even the purple papers were easy to work with. It's such a perfect spring/summer/girly line and I ended up loving each layout more than the one before it!  A lot of the designs I used were the "B" sides of the papers, which you can't see here in the shoppe, but you can see on the MME website right here.

 

Just Dandy
 

For this layout, I used a sketch from Stuck?! because it was different than something I would normally design. I started by cutting several circles from the cute polka dot die cut paper and stitching them down. I used the A and B sides of a few patterened papers for the strips and then added my photos. 

I then stitched my title down, did some handwritten journaling and added some of the super cute little alphas from this line by the bottom photos. I used those alphas on every layout and card I made, and still have a lot of them left!

 

Spring Has Sprung

What could be better with this line than some spring time lilac photos? I really loved the purple B side of the Hello Zig paper, so I used that as my main sheet. I cut a large banner strip about 3 inches wide, folded it like ribbon and adhered it, then used foam dots to adhere my photo. Instead of using the Cute Journaling Card for journaling, I tucked it under a few of the polka dot strips and let the words peek out. 

I made flowers like these before out of felt, but never paper. It turns out they worked out just as easily and looked just as nice! To make these flowers, I cut a strip of paper an inch wide, then folded it in half length-wise and made cuts about 3/4 of the way down to the edge, then rolled it up and adhered the ends. I used a little bit of hot glue to adhere them to my layout.

 

Quotes

When I saw the word bubble paper in this line, I knew it was designed for a layout I had been thinking of making. Quinn used to be quiet and shy when I was at the doctor's office for baby appointments, but one day that all changed and she started talking. A lot. Saying things that were funny, and of course as all 4 year olds do, things her mother wished she would keep to herself. 

I decided I had to capture some of these random quotes on a layout. I chose 2 pictures I had of her being silly and lined them up with 3 of the small Cute Quote Bubble Die Cuts vertically on the page. I used the bigger Hello Title Die Cut for the title and cut the middle out of it to make it work for my own title. I typed up the quotes on to strips and placed them on the small quote bubbles. I used more of the awesome little alphas and also a sheet of the woodgrain paper, which is a really popular pattern right now.

 

Thank You Cards

I always have use for thank you cards, and my supply was getting low, so I whipped up a few with my left overs from this line. I really liked the big paper ribbon on my Spring layout, so I made a version of that to be the focal point of my first card. Quinn was punching with my punches while I worked on this and wanted me to use what she made, so I lined some of the starburst circles up and added my title above and below those.
 

The second one I did was very simple, but still pretty. I sprayed the white card base with Silver Plated Maya Mist, then punched starbursts and butterflies with my Martha punches, inked the edges and layered them in a row near the bottom. You'll see even after 3 layouts and 2 cards, I still had lots of those great alphas left!

  

   

 

Products used in this reveal:

                                 

How To Make A Crepe Paper Flower

-article by Cindy (Kimandasmo)

A few weeks back we made a crepe paper flower, well, I still had a bunch of it left over and while I was stalking scrapbooking blogs this week I found this idea.

You will need two circles of cardstock and crepe paper.

Cover the outside of edge of your larger circle with adhesive. Then we are going to do a fan fold of the crepe paper all the way around the circle. This does not have to be exact.







Then repeat with your second circle.



I then put the smaller circle on top of the larger one and adhered.



Next, cover the exposed area of the top circle and fan fold around the center.
you will end up with a three layer flower. 

Here is my completed scrapbooking layout using this flower. I sprayed mine with Glimmer mist and added a center with ribbon.



I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial.

Cindy is an avid scrapbooker and paper crafter.  She resides in Florida with her husband and two daughters.