#pompom craft

The form is made from chipboard, and I first painted it in acrylic.

I then attached some handmade pompoms to it via good old glue gun, and some firmly tied knots.

I made some leaves from felt and wire, to make the fronds poseable - there's a short video of the process on my instagram (2nd slide in the post carousel). This is probably... the lengthiest part of the whole process since I embroidered the middle of each leaf first (on both sides), then stitched the two sides of each leaf together, sandwiching the wires inbetween.

Next I made a little house from matboard - the stuff used for framing. I've really latched onto this material for a lot of crafty uses, since it is sturdy, easy to cut, and also takes on paint well since it's essentially a thick block of pressed paper.

To create the two little proteas, I took a piece of cardstock paper (used for the printer essentially), and painted it in red acrylic on both sides. Then I dry brushed some light pink and white paint across the paper, again on both sides.

When the paper was thoroughly dry, I snipped tiny petals from it and used them to cover a central form that I made from polymer clay. I didn't want to construct the whole flower from paper since I needed it to be a bit more robust... something that could take a few knocks or falls without breaking or deforming, so polymer clay was my choice. If I had any foam around, I might have tried to use that since the clay is a bit heavier than preferred, but all in all, it worked out.

The petals were glued on in layers, and I also added a thin light streak to each petal afterwards to really help differentiate them from previous layers.

Lastly, I added some leaves to the stem, making sure to shape them around a pen first. You can kind of see the wire of the stem poking out the bottom - this is intentional! That's what I used to attach the proteas to the chipboard frame. I drilled a small hole (the exact size of the wire) into the frame where I wanted the flowers to go, and then pushed the wire in with some super glue. There was still a bit of wire poking through the other side, which I bent against the frame to really hold the protea in place :)

The wire-poking-through-frame is largely the method I used to attach the felt leaves and the house as well. With the leaves, I wrapped the wires a couple times around the frame after gluing them in, just for extra security.