What are some of your earliest childhood memories? I remember the day my mum went off to hospital to give birth to my sister, I remember getting in a crash on the bus when a milk float got too close to it and smashed the window directly in front of us. Come to think of it my mum was on the way to have a scan as she was pregnant with my sister! I remember the day the cat ran away because it was fed up of my sister. Thankfully not all the earliest memories revolve around traumatic times involving my sister, once she was bigger than a fetus and a new born baby she was actually alright, and you could do things with her. Sometimes fun things! And often those fun things, especially in the summer, would include making daisy chains. If I wasn’t making them with her, I’d be making them at school with friends, or at the park with friends, or in my garden with friends. Quite simply, if you knew me and spent time with me over the summer chances are we’d end up making daisy chains together. There is something relaxing and special about crafting something with nature, surrounded by nature.
Fast forward many years and one or two decades later, and my love of nature based crafts is still just as strong. It has a calming quality about it which I just adore AND for the most part it’s free. And who doesn’t love a free craft? You can imagine my absolute joy then when I came across this article on Mother Natured about making poms poms using grass instead of wool/yarn! If I remember correctly an audible “Oooooooooo” came out of my mouth. Instantly I had to try it, this needed to be tested out!
In our house we follow a No Mow May schedule of mowing for the majority of the garden (as a side note the following craft would be perfect to do with your cuttings immediately after May), except for one strip which I leave long all year round. I love watching the different grasses grow, this year we gained buttercups in there too, which brought a happy yellow to the garden, and a load of buzzing bees. To this stretch of long grass I skipped off too, scissors in tow, to cut down a small handful and test this beauty out. And guess what? It worked! Well, of course it worked, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this article for you!
I tweaked a few of the techniques to suit how I preferred to make the pom poms, however the core of it remained true to the Mother Natured article. Just one pom pom is all it took to get my creative juices going. What could I make with grass pom poms? I asked myself. As a household filled with people who are allergic to grass I certainly wasn’t going to bring the end result inside, what ever I made needed to be for the garden. Some bunting for the fences perhaps? Or a hanging piece? After much deliberation I happily settled on making a Grass Pom Pom Wreath for my garden gate, having wanted something to hang on there for awhile. This was the perfect addition I had been looking for.
Grab your sun-grass-es on and get making
You will need:
- Long soft grass
- String/tie of some sort
- Scissors
- Wreath or structure to attach the pom poms too
- Heavy book (optional)
Method
Step one I believe is pretty obvious, you need to cut your grass. This works best with softer grass, any that has stiff stems or anything generally quite rough and gruff won’t work the same. For this reason you may wish to avoid cutting right at the bottom of the blade because it is a bit stiffer there, however it’s all down to preference at the end of the day.
Once you have your pile of cut grass grab yourself a small handful, you may wish to experiment here to find your preferred size of handful. You don’t want too many as it will be too think, and too little will make it a bit thin and sad looking. And no one needs a sad pom pom. With your appropriately sized handful of grass hold the end in one hand and wrap it around your fingers. This is where my technique differs to the one in the original blog post I found about it. If you need help here I did make a video which you can find on my Instagram account. I wrapped the grass around my fingers until there was no more to wrap.
At this point I carefully slid the grass off my fingers and tied the bundle up in the middle with thin string. If you use thick string it won’t let the pom poms sit properly.
Then I took my scissors and cut the looped sections at both ends, squished the grass into shape, and trimmed the edges to make the grass all an even level.
Then repeat until you have all the pom poms you need.
As an optional step I placed them under a heavy book for half an hour to help them hold the shape I wanted, some of my grass was quite stiff so just needed that extra help.
The final step was the most time consuming part for me, not sure why because you would have thought the pom pom making part would be, however, no, for me it was this bit! Taking your wreath or structure secure the pom poms into place using string or similar. Then hang it up where you’d like to display it for all to see. What I LOVE about this craft is that as the grass dries out it will change colour, just in time for autumn.
There is so much potential with this craft, I’d love to see how yours turn out, make sure to follow me on Instagram and send me your creations over!
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