In this step by step tutorial I’ll show you how I went about making white rose pomander balls for my wedding.

Step 1. Gather your supplies!

You will need:
- Silk rose stems
- Styrofoam balls 10cm across (4in)
- Thin coloured ribbons
- Wide coloured ribbon
- Wire snippers
- Glue gun

I bought 105 stems of white silk roses off ebay for about $30 + shipping, which was enough to do 5 pomander balls. I bought my styrofoam balls from Spotlight (craft store), $6 for 2. And I had a lot of ribbon from all of my Wedding DIY goodies, which I bought from various craft and dollar stores for around $1-$2 per 8m.

Step 2. Cut all the heads off your rose stems, leaving only about 1cm of the wire stem. Don’t throw away the stems just yet though, as we’re going to use the wire later on.

Step 3. Mark the balls where you are going to insert the flower stems. Basically you need to draw 4 evenly spaced circles all the way around your ball with 2 common intersection points, and then place 8 dots along each of the circles, all evenly spaced. See the diagram if that sounds too confusing, which shows one side of the ball with the lines and dots indicated.

This step is really just to make sure your pomander balls don’t have any gaps or “bald patches”, so it doesn’t have to be totally exact. When drawing your lines and dots make sure you use pencil or a light coloured marker so it doesn’t show through if you’re using white flowers.

Step 4. Insert your rose heads

You do this simply by pushing the wire stem into the ball, as far as it will go. Once you have all your rose heads inserted just check it over and make sure you’re happy with the placement of them. If it’s all ok, you can take them all out, and use the glue gun to fill the holes with glue before re-inserting the flower heads. This may seem like it’s a non-essential repeat step, it just depends on how perfect you want them to be. If you’re confident you will space them all correctly the first time, just glue them as you go.

Step 5. Create your handle

Cut a length off one of the remaining wire flower stems, about 5cm (2.5in) long. Bend this into a U shape then glue and insert it into the ball between the flower heads. Give it a few minutes to dry.

Now take your wide ribbon and cut a length (depends on how long you want it to hang) to form the handle. I decided to tie mine right at the base near the ball, so tied it around the U loop and then made a bow. You may decide to just thread yours through the loop and tie a bow at the top, it’s totally up to you.

This is probably where most people would be finished, I wanted to add some ribbons at the base though to blow in the breeze, if you want to do the same, go to step 6!

Step 6.Add flowing ribbons

For these you just need to repeat step 5 for the U shaped loop and insert it into the bottom of the ball, exactly opposite the top loop. Then simply cut lengths of thin ribbon in different or similar colours, thread through the loop and tie in a knot to secure.

And you’re all finished in 6 easy steps!

Seeing as these babies can go for about $100 each on ebay or in a store, and you’ve just made 5 for around $50 with DIY! That’s a DIY saving of about $450.

Wedding photos by www.kellytunney.com.au

These are the hanging glass balls I also made to hang at the ceremony. To make these, I simply pushed some coloured ribbon into glass christmas baubles and strung them from thin black ribbon.

Please let me know if you DIY some Pomander Balls and share any tips or advice!

I ♥ comments! =)