maker*land.

Although it is still summer and at the time of writing, we are all cranky and worn out after yet another forty-plus-degrees-celsius day, we were lucky to have a small taste of autumn last weekend.  The cloudy skies, a brisk wind, a bit of rain (just a little bit, mind you) has me all excited for the cooler months ahead, dragging out all those lovely cosy winter woolies and dressing the littles all toasty warm.

However, sometimes winter-day clothing can tend towards a little drab.  These colourful little pom pom hair elastics are a fun way of brightening up an otherwise dull outfit.  Also, they're a great way of using up yarn scraps and teaching your kids how to make fun accessories for themselves.

Firstly, and obviously, make some pom poms.  Pom pom makers are quite cheap; I bought mine from a discount gift shop.   Of course, you can use the traditional method, which takes a little more time, or if you want to make smaller pom poms you can use this very clever fork method.

Use a long length of yarn when you tie your pom poms through the centre before clipping them, you'll use these later to tie your pom poms together.

 

Clip your pom poms into nice neat round balls (taking care not to clip those long yarn tails).

Now you can pair them up into whatever colourful combinations you like.  Using the yarn tails, tie them together securely.

 

  Then tie them onto hair elastics securely, clip the tails off and they are all done.

You could tie some lengths of ribbon onto the hair elastic if you wanted to, either tying them in bows or just leaving them free like streamers.  I don't do this because ribbons flapping and tickling about her head would make Sophie aware that something pretty is in her hair, and she would immediately pull it off.   When it's just the pom poms, she thinks she just has normal elastics in her hair.  They don't seem to add any extra weight to her head, which is great.  And a bit sneaky.