Make Your Own Yarn Pom Poms

We use a lot of yarn pom poms in our arts and crafts at home. I got tired of paying high prices for store made pom poms, and then I discovered that we could make our own.

Not only are they less expensive when we make them at home, but they are also a lot of fun to make. We can choose our own colors and alter the sizes for different projects as we need them.

We start by cutting a piece of paper or cardboard into a rectangle two inches by six inches. I found it easier to use a bit of a cardboard box for this. It doesn't matter what color it is or if it has other writing on it just as long as it is stiff enough for you to be able to wrap the yarn around.

Cut one piece of yarn seven inches long and tape it lightly along the longest direction of your piece of cardboard. It should stretch across all six inches with about half and inch hanging off the top and the bottom. Put your tape all the way at the edges of your cardboard (not in the middle!) because the middle is going to be covered up later.

Using a longer piece of yarn, begin wrapping across the short direction, (the 2 inch section), of your piece of cardboard. Wrap it around twelve times. If you loose count that's okay, just get close. Wrapping it many, many more times than that will simply make your pom poms thicker, whereas wrapping it too few times will make a sparser pom pom.

Don't worry about taping down the ends of the piece that you are wrapping; it's okay to let them dangle for now, they will get caught up later. Once you have your yarn wrapped, untape the two ends of your sevn-inch piece and wiggle them both towards one of the six-inch edges of your cardboard. Pull them towards each other and tie them, pulling it tight enough to squeeze all twelve of your wrapped pieces of your yarn tightly together. Tie a good strong knot so it stays together.

Now on the opposite six-inch edge, slide one blade of your pair of scissors in between the cardboard and the yarn wrappings and cut through all twelve of them. Your piece of cardboard will fall away and all of your wrapped yarn will now be caught in the center with the seven-inch piece that you tied.

If your seven-inch piece left you with ends that are slightly longer than the rest of your pom pom ends, trim it slightly so that it blends in with the rest of the pom pom. Fluff it up a little bit and it's all set to use.

You can repeat this process with different sizes of cardboard to get different sizes of pom poms. You can also alter the number of times you wrap the yarn to make your pom poms thicker or sparser, whatever is appropriate for the project you want to use them for.

These homemade pom poms are great for a variety of crafts, but just making them is a lot of fun in and of itself!

Please click on the author's name (above the article) to read more of her work on Associated Content.

.