Making a pomander with dried lavender
This pomander is very decorative and easy to make. Use it to perfume your wardrobe – keeping your clothes smelling fresh and deterring clothes moths!
This one is hanging on my wardrobe door as I thought it was too pretty to hide away.
It’s cheap to make too – the polystyrene ball was 29p from a craft shop, and I used beads and ribbon left over from other projects.
How to make the lavender pomander
You will need for the project
- Polystyrene ball 7cm diameter
- Dried lavender
- Ribbon
- Tassel (I bought mine but they are easily made from thread)
- Large beads
- Metal skewer
- PVA glue
- Florist wire & pliers to bend it
- Lavender essential oil & spray bottle
Method for making the pomander
[image – making dried lavender pomander]
Carefully poke a hole all the way through the middle of the ball using the skewer. I found it easier to do this first and leave it in place as it gives you something to hold while gluing on the lavender. I covered the entire ball with PVA and pressed the lavender into it.
Carefully poke a hole all the way through the middle of the ball using the skewer. I found it easier to do this first and leave it in place as it gives you something to hold while gluing on the lavender. I covered the entire ball with PVA and pressed the lavender into it.
Once it had dried, I checked it over, removing any tiny stems and patching holes. I ended up with a covering about 0.5cm thick all over. Because such a small quantity of lavender wouldn’t smell very strong, I sprayed the ball evenly all over with lavender essential oil and allowed to dry.
I then removed the skewer from the ball and inserted a short piece of florists wire all the way through. It was just long enough to allow me to form a loop top and bottom to attach the tassel and hanging loop. At the bottom, the tassel is wired in place through a large bead which stops the whole thing pulling upwards.
At the top, the hanging loop is tied onto the wire loop with a couple of beads for decoration. The ribbon bow hides the wire.
Crafting tips
To spray the ball, I emptied a 10ml bottle of lavender essential oil into a small spray bottle obtained from my local chemist. If using oil, keep away from polished, painted and synthetic surfaces & textiles in case of marks.Adding oil means that you aren’t reliant on the natural fragrance of the lavender, so you can choose a less fragrant but deeper blue dried lavender if you wish.
The pomander can be refreshed from time to time with another drop or two (or spritz) of oil.
I like to use hi-tack PVA glue because it holds items in place while it is drying.
Buy fragrant dried lavender
Blue dried lavender
Buy lavender essential oil
Hi, i had real problems getting the lavender to stick to the ball, so i have covered in old news paper and then coated with lavender for a more than successful finish. I love this idea, thank you so much x
That’s a good idea! I didn’t have too much trouble but I guess it depends what brand of glue you use. Thanks for commenting :)
Hi Ruth!
I loved it! Good idea! And I would translate it into Spanish for my blog
Would you give me your permission?
Thank you very much! Greetings from Argentina!
Hi Maria,
Thanks very much for commenting! You are welcome to use this post, however you must provide a full credit and a link back to this page.
Your blog looks lovely!
Best wishes,
Ruth.
Hi Ruth,
I’m planning on making these for mother’s day with my grade 3 class. Do you have any idea of how much lavender you used for 1 ball?
Thanks for sharing!
Hello, Good luck with your class! Each ball uses very little lavender – maybe 10g (0.3 ounce) – but you will need extra so that there is plenty to roll the polystyrene ball in! Thanks, Ruth x
Hi Ruth, I love your idea of the lavender pomander, before all this virus trouble I had a monthly craft stall ( at a local church coffee morning), I sold handmade cards,joke survival kits,ribbon crosses, and of course little lavender bags. which were near enough one of the top sellers. Just a couple of questions please, if you don’t mind. any idea on how much to sell them for, and do you do the instructions in a downloadable sheet please? Thankyou, Marilyn.
Hi Marilyn, Glad you like it! Prices can be a bit variable depending on the market and level of finish, so I wouldn’t like to comment, but make sure you’re compensated for your time! Handmade items are very popular at the moment. This make is included in my lavender craft pdf – I see the link is broken so will look into putting it back up. In the meantime if you press Control and P, this will offer to print the page and you should be able to save it as a pdf there. Best wishes, Ruth
Thankyou Ruth.
Hi Marilyn, the free Lavender Craft pdf is back up now, sorry about that – here is the link:
https://driedflowercraft.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/lavender-craft-book-110913.pdf