A Time Consuming Alternative

The Nixon Library's garden is already beautiful enough without any extra decorations. Even so, I wanted to have something line the aisles to make it pop.

Our original plan was to use paper lanterns, but I could not find any that were the right size or color.

I now thoroughly regret not looking harder because I stupidly took on a new task: tissue pomander balls.

The blogger who maintains Vintage Glam has a wonderful tutorial to how she created her ceremony decorations. Her gorgeous yellow pomander balls look absolutely amazing in the pictures to the left.

After seeing these photos I decided that I needed them. Again, stupid.

The materials for this project are inexpensive:

Tissue paper: $1.79 for a pack of 20 sheets, which makes 40 flowers

4" Styrofoam ball: $1.74 after 50% off coupon

Wire: $1.75

Ribbon: $0.69 on clearance

I followed the tutorial pretty closely, but had to adjust a few things.

In order to attach the ribbon, I first tied off the ends of the ribbon into a knot. Next, I twisted a piece of wire around the knot.

Instead of using a 5" ball, I used a 4" ball. I had first attempted it with the larger size, but the result was a massive pomander. My final pomander is still bigger than I want, but I refuse to take another one apart and try again.

I attached about 30 paper flowers instead of the estimated 20 in the tutorial, which will mean that I need to fold even more flowers. This is not a task I am happy about since it took me more than 12 hours to cut, fold, and fluff 160 tissue flowers.

Here is my final result. The first picture is so that you can compare the size of the styrofoam ball to the full pomander. Can you see why I would underestimate the amount of flowers needed and the size of the pomander?

Bella decided that she wasn't getting enough attention so she barged into the picture. I'm going to try to make it a little fuller and I think it will look better.

All this work better be worth it!