kojodesigns: kojotutorial: pom pom name pennant

Seriously, this little banner is one of my favorite parts of Burke's 'big boy room.' Want to make one of your own?

To make this string-of-goodness, you'll need:
-yarn in your palette
-Goodwill-bound tshirts in your palette (optional)
-a pom pom maker
-floral wire or craft wire
-coordinating felt (a few 9x12 sheets), cut into dime sized circles
-coordinating grosgrain ribbon (I used 3 yards)
-a hot glue gun and hot glue

1. Make a whole pile of pom poms using a medium sized pom pom maker. Each letter takes about twenty pom poms. Here are a couple tutorials for using a pom pom maker to make yarn pom poms and jersey pom poms.

2. Print full page sized outlines of letters that spell your name (or word of choice). I used Powerpoint. Use a fairly basic font- since you'll be bending wire to match your printouts and don't want a ton of loops or serifs. Then, bend floral wire or craft wire in place to match each letter outline. Doubling up the craft wire will give you a solid base for your pom poms.

3. Begin tying pom poms onto your wire letters all in a row. Switch up the colors so you have an even mix of your color palette. The pom poms will be a little wiggle-y at this point, don't worry about that.

4. If you haven't already, cut out a stack of dime sized felt circles that match your palette. You'll need one circle for each pom pom.

5. Once your entire letter is covered in pom poms, secure the pom pom in place by hot gluing a felt circle to the back of the pom pom. This will glue it in place on the wire. When you're finished, the back of your letter will be lines of felt circles (my pom poms were close enough together that the felt circles touched each other) in the shape of your letter. Repeat until you have a whole name (or word) of pom poms.