Pom poms made from plastic bags are so very festive and they look so great its very hard to believe that they're made from plastic bags! So start saving those plastic bags, and put them to great use the next time you need an artistic gift wrapping solution, or some great party decorations. And as for the size of your pom poms, well you decide, since plastic bags work well for large pom poms as well as fairly small ones. In order to share the positive message about the idea of recycling, why not create some custom stickers with a message about environmental protection to use together with these fun pom poms, whether on gift boxes or cards!
While one certailny can make plastic bag pom poms from strips of plastic bags, I recommend making plarn, (seen above) namely plastic bag yarn, from your hoard of bags, and using that to make pom poms as you would with regular yarn. So lets get started!
You'll Need:
- plastic bags, the light weight/partly translucent kind used generally by grocery stores
- sharp scissors
- string
- cardboard scraps
How To Make Plastic Bag Pom Poms:
Step 1: Collect your bags and make balls of "plarn" like in the photo above. Instructions for making plarn can be found here. Pom poms can of course be made from just one color, but they're even more stunning when made from a mix of colors.
Step 2: Decide how large you'd like to make your pom poms, and then cut a piece of cardboard whose width measures roughly the size of the desired pom pom. You can always make the pom poms smaller if they end up being bigger than needed. For the small medium and large pom poms I made, I cut pieces of cardboard that are 6", 4" and 2" respectively, and my finished pom poms measured 7", 4.5" and 3" after their haircuts.
Step 3: Wrap plarn around your piece of cardboard around 20 times, combining the colors of your choice.
Step 4: Remove the plarn from your piece of cardboard, and tightly tie a piece of string around the exact middle of the plarn, as seen above. For small pom poms, you will need to tie the string around the plarn before you remove it from the cardboard. You can do this by simply laying a piece of string on the cardboard before you wrap the plarn around it. In this way you will only be securing one side of the hank of plarn, but that is sufficient to hold it together.
Step 5: Cut through the loops of plarn using scissors, if it becomes difficult, just cut off the ends in order to open the loops. Fluff up the pom pom and then trim it to make it as round as possible.
That is it, welcome to the wonderful new world of plastic bag pom poms, you'll be making them for years to come, I'm quite sure!
