Little Jo is the official flower girl in my sister-in-law’s upcoming wedding. I decided it would be more fun to make her a custom flower girl basket than it would be to just buy one, so I headed to the craft room. You may remember from the wedding invitations we made that the wedding colors are black, cream, and red. I didn’t have everything I needed on hand to make a basket with those colors, so I used some lovely yellow and silver for this first basket. If the bride approves, I’ll make a new one for her wedding in her colors. I have to say, though, that I LOVE how the yellow turned out!

First up, I wanted to use our new pom pom maker from Lion Brand yarns to make some cute pom poms. I can’t believe I am telling you this, but this is the first time I have ever made a pom pom! Chica was shocked. Now that I have made a bunch, I can assure you this won’t be my last project using them. They are so fun and cute!

This pom pom tree allows you to make pom poms of different sizes very easily. You just move the sticks further apart to make bigger pom poms. I needed small ones, so I started wrapping my yarn around with the two sticks closest together. I wrapped the wrap the yarn around about 50-60 times.

Next, tie another piece of yarn tightly around the middle and then slide your yarn off of the sticks. Then slide the scissors in where the sticks were (on each side) and cut your loops apart.

I love fluffing it out and seeing the pom pom appear. I know, it’s such a silly thing to get so excited about, but it’s fun!. I trimmed them a bit to make the ball a little more even.

Next, I needed to pay some attention to the actual basket. In the box of new Martha Stewart craft paints and tools we recently received, there was a kit to make the acrylic paint into spray paint. Uhm, hello! YAY! You all know how I love to spray paint anything! It was super simple to do as well. First, you add some of the solution to one of the included bottles, and then an equal part of the paint you want to use. There are handy measurement lines on the bottle to make this easy to do. I started with small quantities, because I wasn’t sure how much it would cover.

Then just twist the aerosol can onto the top of the bottle and it’s ready to go. Just like regular spray paint, you’ll want to apply light coats each time so it doesn’t run. The coverage was fantastic and it used a lot less paint than I thought it would. I sprayed the whole basket thoroughly and hadn’t even used half of what was in the bottle.

After the paint thoroughly dried, I wanted to add some ribbon details. I took a wider satin ribbon in a coordinating color and weaved it through the basket slats. I found that a bone folder worked perfectly to help me get the ribbon beneath the woven basket slats. I used a thinner satin ribbon to cover the basket handle, wrapping it around and securing it on both ends with a dot of hot glue.

Since the glue gun was out and and already hot, I went ahead and covered the top inside of the basket with the same silver/gray ribbon I used on the slats. It gave it a nice finishing touch on the inside. I thought it was worth it, even if hardly anyone will actually see it. Then I used more hot glue to attach a row of yellow pom poms around the whole outside edge. I love them!

I like this so much that I wish my sister-in-law’s wedding colors were yellow and gray! I really like how this flower girl basket turned out and I am hoping she likes the prototype as well so that I can make another one for Little Jo to carry in the wedding.

I made extra pom poms in a bigger size to put into the basket. The flower girl can toss these instead of petals. Wouldn’t that be a unique and fun aisle toss idea?