Pompom Ribbons

Ribbons to decorate gifts! If you have extra money from your budget to buy some ribbons, go ahead with it. It'll make your gift look extra professional! Or, instead of gift wrapping gigantic items, alternatively you can use the pompom ribbons to decorate the gift.

You'll need ribbons of certain lengths. So here are some basic tips on the length you need.

Small size pompom: 2 m (1.5 m for pompom, 0.5 m for tying).
Medium size pompom: 3 m (2.5 m for pompom, 0.5 m for tying).
Large size pompom: 4 m (3.5 m for pompom, 0.5 m for tying).

[Note] To the Americans, m means meter.

The size of the pompom also depends on the size of your ribbon, large width ribbons usually makes large sized pompoms. Medium width ribbons make medium sized pompoms. And ... you get the picture.

Click to view large.

On with the tutorial! For this ribbon, I combined a small size (purple) ribbon with an even smaller size (white) ribbon to have an extremely pretty effect. For the purpose of the tutorial, please treat as if the white and purple are adjoined. For your reference, the purple ribbon is 2 m long (0.5 m for tying) and the white ribbon is 1.5 m long (to complement the purple ribbon's length that forms the pompom).

1. Cut the ribbons in length and leave a 0.5 m ribbon for tying the pompom.
2. I positioned the white ribbon on top of the purple one. For the purpose of this tutorial, take as if both are one ribbon.
3. Spread your left hand fingers (or whichever hand you feel comfortable with) like so, and encircle the ribbon around your fingers. The length of your spread-out fingers is the diameter of your pompom.
   
4. Encircle the whole of the ribbon until it becomes like so.
   
5. Cut the ends into a triangular shape and leave 2 mm space in the middle to MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT CUT UNTIL THE RIBBON BREAKS). This will pose some difficulty if the ribbon material is thick, so choose a flimsy material to ease cutting. The length guide I provided is also a rough guide for easy-to-cut in this step. Too long ribbons will result in too thick total-loops, which makes it harder to cut.
   
6. Join both triangular-cut-ends together like so.
7. Tie the concaved ends with the 0.5 m ribbon which you prepared earlier.
8. The product should now be like so.
   
9. Snip off all the loose ribbon ends so that it won't fragment (?). Fold the said loose end into half, then cut off at a 45 degrees angle.
   
10. It should now look like so.
11. Time to make the pompom! Pompom-ise the top half of the loops first. Pull the first inside loop UPwards (loop 1).
12. It should turn out like so.
13. Pull the second inside loop DOWNwards (loop 2). Alternate all the loops to go up, down, up, down until all the loops are singled out.
14. You now get the top half of the pompom.
15. Now for the bottom half. Turn the bottom half upwards. Then pull the inside loop UPwards (loop a). Repeat step 13 for the bottom half of the pompom.
16. Adjust the pompom to the shape. There's the final product!

Hope you enjoyed this ribbon tutorial! Happy giving.