Lavender Covered Balls
How to Make Lavender Covered Balls
You can make covered pomander balls out of your harvested materials. You can cover these balls with prunings or Lavender flower heads, the choice is yours. The Lavender balls can be made into Christmas Ornaments and topiary trees. How to craft these covered ball forms will explained below.
You will need to have purchased Styrofoam ball forms from your craft store. I like the green ones as apposed to the white because it doesn't show up as badly as white does if you miss covering a spot.( Which I know you won't do.
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If you are planning on suspending these balls you will first need to place a wire so that you have a way to attach a ribbon. You may use florists wire and make a little loop at one end and stick the other straight side into the form. Other things you could use to make a loop are a hairpin, or paperclip. You will need to unbend the paper clip and then impale the form fully until you only have enough of the clip protruding to allow you to thread a ribbon or string through for hanging.
If you are planning to hang it up go ahead and thread the ribbon through the loop which is easier to do now before you cover it with flowers!
The method or materials used to cover the ball is totally up to you. You may spread glue on the form and press on the tiny harvested flower buds until covered. You can pierce holes with a toothpick and insert either fresh or dried flower heads that you've snipped off and tried to make a uniform size.
Work slowly and carefully trying your best to uniformly cover your form. Place the materials as close together as possible. Remember fresh materials will shrink when they dry leaving gaps. Packing your materials as close as you can will minimize this.
Lavender Covered Topiary
Try covering the form with a combination of different colored harvested flowers or maybe with some prunings too. I know you have to have seen those living Rosemary plants, that are available around Christmas time, that have been pruned into a conical shape like a mini tree. Well purchase a conical form an use your fresh plant prunings and make a tree from them. You could add the flower heads too if you like.
You may also use your covered balls to make little topiary trees. I like to use 6- 8" forms. I first attach the form to the tree base and do a test fit, then I remove the form and cover it with materials to my liking. When I am finished applying materials I then reattach the form to the wooden tree base using a hot glue gun.
See there are a lot you can do with these covered ball forms or other shaped forms.
You may get egg shaped forms and make covered Easter eggs to hang from an inside tree. Use different colored flower buds here as well. Aren't Easter eggs different colors after all?
I will leave you with one last idea which you probably already thought of. Purchase small 2-3" forms and make fragrant Christmas decorations for your tree. If your careful they might last a season or two.
Lavender Stalk Christmas Ball Ornaments
Here is a picture of another version of Lavender Christmas Ball Ornaments that are woven with beautiful ribbons. They are made in a method similar to Lavender Wands. The Lavender stems must be very fresh and pliable or breakage will occur. You will need a styrofoam ball form to place inside and then carefully fold the stems around. Tutorial for how to make Lavender Stalk Christmas Ornaments.
Follow the directions for making the wands with the addition of placing a ball form inside with the flower heads. You will need to gently splay out the flower heads so that the ball is nested inside them then carefully fold the stalks up an around the ball securing the stem tops together forming a nice little package. Then simply weave the ribbon of your choice through the Lavender stems.
You can see from the picture that these wonderfully fragrant handmade Lavender and ribbon ball ornaments can be quite the show stopper! Here is another picture of Christmas Ornaments and large Lavender Wands for you to enjoy.
