Apparently I wasn't ready with making Pom Poms yet. In an older blog post I created Pom Poms from Tissue paper, but these have been made from wool. While visiting my mom last Mother's Day we were in the mood to 'be creative'. Being a Sunday, the stores were closed so we had to use whatever my mother had available...hence the wool.

I searched online what you can do with wool besides an form of knitting and came across several sites showing how to make small Pom Poms from wool while only using wool, a fork and scissors. Great! Easy, little mess and doesn't take hours. You only have to twist a string of wool about a fork a lot, tie it together with another string of wool, take it of the fork, cut the ends and trim the outside into a small sphere (see the pictures somewhat lower in the blog)

Having made a few, we didn't really know what to do with them, the cat wasn't interested... I don't really remember how, but suddenly I thought that they actually look a lot like a flower, they only needed a stem. Using some of the floral wire I had lying around I pushed one Pom Pom onto the end of about 20 cm of floral wire, and voila, a cute flower

So I made a bunch more, experimenting with the number of loops of wool around the fork. 

• In the end between 50-75 loops worked best for the width of the fork I used. 
• I experimented a bit with types of wool and found that you really need wool that can be stretched, otherwise you can't really tie a string around it tight enough for it to become a nice sphere.
• Finally, I found that not pulling on the string too much while wrapping it around the fork gave the best results

I made a really big one with 150 loops using something else than a fork, although I do not know the name for it, but in essence, it was 2-3 times wider than my fork. But these Pom Poms became so heavy, I had to twist two floral wires together to keep the wire from sagging. See the big one below

I am actually not satisfied with the grey vase in the photos. I think either a vase with a much smalle neck looks better, or a very high en medium wide cylindrical clear glass vase where I could place them completely into. Both of those options I don't have a spare of right now, though

After Easter I was left with several of those sort of creepy twisted twigs. I actually like them a lot. I find them a lot more interesting with all their kinks and twists than just a regular stick. Therefore, I wanted to see if I could use the twigs and create something that could possibly be a more permanent addition to our living room

From previous random searches for new craft ideas I had a few ideas I wanted to try. In the end I made 4 Pom-poms and about 8 origami butterflies and attached these to the twigs using floral wire. Really easy, it took me about one saturday afternoon 

Pom-poms
I made the Pom-poms from 5 layers of tissue paper of about 15 x 25 cm. For the full instructions look here.
At first I used Crepe paper, because I had never heard of Tissue paper in the Netherlands and thought it was virtually the same. I wasn't very pleased with the result, the crepe paper was just slightly too... thick I guess. My luck, I had to go to London the next week, had some time to spare at Hammersmith so I visited the Papercraft store. Then I suddenly saw a packet of paper labeled as "Tissue paper". I was curious if it was really different than Crepe paper and took along one packet of blue tissue paper. It feels a lot thinner than Crepe paper and I was definitely more pleased with the resulting Pom-poms. I used floral wire to attach the Pom-poms to the braches. They are very light so I could did not have to stay near the beginning of the branches, but could spread them out across the entire set-up

Butterflies
I think that the butterfly design that I liked best is not the "regular" design. This butterfly has no clear body in the middle, but that was the main reason I liked these best; simple but very recognizable. There are very easy to fold, after only two I could do it on my own. You can find the full folding instructions here. 
I did use a bit of glue to keep the back properly attached to the front (I think you will understand what I mean when you try to fold one yourself)
I put the floral wire in a fold on the back of the butterfly, left about 5 cm between the butterfly and the point where I twisted the wire around the branch so I could get the effect that the butterfly was "flying" near the branch

I am still not sure if I should add more butterflies, I am afraid it might get too crowded. Perhaps I'll leave it at this for now, I can always add more in a few weeks if I want to :)