rose ornament

Last week I found a tutorial for a pomander that struck my fancy. It was on Betz White's blog. The tutorial was in a slide show format, which meant I couldn't print it out so I took some notes and then played this weekend. My notes weren't great but I'm not one to follow directions well, anyway.

I used generic Jo-Ann's felt (not 100% wool), golden pearly-headed pins, and 3" and 2" Styrofoam balls. The tutorial said to glue the flowers. I stitched them. I'm just not that neat with glue and glue and fabric just don't mix for me. I enjoyed stitching and molding the flowers as I went and am quite happy with the results.

The first ball is larger, made using a 3" ball. It took more roses to cover but I like the proportions. The second ornament is done on a 2" ball. When I added the hanging cord (I used gold ribbon I had on hand), I added jingle bells to the bottom because I want to use the balls as ornaments. For the two balls, I used five sheets of felt for the roses (pale pink, hot pink, red, yellow and orange) and two sheets of green (I only used a little of the green, for leaves). With a sprig of mistletoe pinned to the bottom, they would make nice kissing balls.

The rose that Betz taught in the tutorial is a very nice rose that is simple to make. I've been thinking about what I want to do with the extra roses I have. I may use them for a small corsage-like brooch. I like the look of the pin in the center of the flower so I'll need to find some similar beads to add. They'd also go nice at the end of a hair clip.

This last globe is the product of hating to waste anything. I love how these colors look together and was sad when I ran out of felt. So I took all the scraps from cutting the circles for the roses and pinned them randomly to a ball. I just kept adding more and more scraps. At first it looked really mangy but as I added scraps it got a bit better. I still haven't decided if it's ugly enough to be cute. I don't think so. In any case, it will be simple to unpin the scraps. I have had the thought of unpinning the scraps and cutting them into small circles and then covering the ball with this "confetti." I think it would look rather like those sequin covered balls from the 50s and 60s, without the glitz.