A while back I cut up some t-shirts for some sort of escape from the black hole known as the internet. I needed an activity that would allow my brain to rest. An activity that would finish the same as it started and not take me on some hour long excursion through cyber space ending up with me watching the latest viral cat video when my intention had been to clean up my email in box.

For a short time my colorful balls of yarn rested in a bowl on my dining room table awaiting further creative inspiration from me. Of course what actually happened is that this bowl of bright soft ball “toys” was discovered by the cats. They found great joy in knocking the yarn balls to the floor where the dogs subsequently got involved in the unraveling process intent on chewing and if left to their own devises presumable consuming this new and delightfully colored spaghetti.

Fortunately the games were discovered before any of this new puppy pasta was actually ingested but clearly the yarn ball decorations had to go. I stuffed the balls of yarn in a plastic bag and continued to ponder a final use for them.

Here is what I have come up with so far.

The first step was to make the stems. I used some wire cutters to cut some pieces of wire hangers.

Then I used my dapping tools to reshape some bottle caps. (It is a fun toy/tool to have but I have to admit I have not actually used it much.)

Then I used a hammer and nail to punch a hole through the middle of the bottle caps.

I used several different colors of t-shirt yarn to make different sizes and thicknesses of pom pom shapes.

And then hooked the hanger wire through the pom pom secured it with some pliers and slid the bottle cap on to the wire.

Once all the stems are attached the yarn flowers were dipped into some pickle juice glue. It is glue made from gelatin and vinegar or pickle juice. I have used this glue on a few different projects (most notably to recover a worn out chair) and I figured it would be suitable for this project as well. You can watch the tutorial for the glue here.

Once the glue was ready I dipped each of the “flower pom pom” into the glue liquid and then squeezed out the excess liquid. The glue is made using boiling vinegar so care should be taken when squeezing out the excess glue.

After about an hour of drying time the flowers are ready to be shaped. For the thicker pom poms that are shaped like carnations. I loosen up the strands and trimmed the edges to make a rounded shape. The yellow daisy was trimmed into a flatter shape with the added white knot center glued in the middle. To make the rose bud shapes I started with thinner pom poms with longer strands and used a wire to hold the tops in place until the glue was completely dry.

Once the flowers were dry the bottle caps were glued to the base of each flower.

Then each stem was wrapped with florist tape. The florist tape will stick to itself and wrapping the stem is quite easy but a bit of glue needs to be used to adhere the florist tape to the bottle cap.

For the faux babies breath flowers I used some pliable wire to shape the stems and then wrapped knotted pieces of the white t-shirt yarn onto the stems.

I played around with a few different arrangements until I got one that I liked.

Oh and I almost forgot the wine bottle vase is wrapped in t-shirt yarn as well.

Happy Upcycling,