Two trends that seem to be in every magazine at the moment: pom poms and cacti, (separately, I mean. I’m yet to see a pom pom wearing cactus, but you never know…).
I like a bargain. Everybody does. I considered going to Primark to get pom pom’d up, but the ethics around ‘fast fashion’ are bothering me a bit lately, and so I decided against it.
I had a pack of pom poms in my craft kit, bought for a pound over a year ago from John Lewis’ bargain basement section. At the time I had no idea what I’d do with them. Brightly coloured pom poms weren’t a trend at the time (whoever thought they would be?), but I snagged them purely on the basis of their cheapness.
So, this is what I did with them:
1) Upcycled a t-shirt that had been languishing in the back of my wardrobe for years. It took me about ten minutes to hand sew the pom poms on to the pocket. If you sew a lot I’m sure you could do this in a couple of minutes.
2) Embellished a bag that had also been in my wardrobe for years. This was a five minute make; pom poms + fabric glue + bag = result.
The bag was bought years ago for a wedding, used once and shoved away. I’m pretty sure it came from a charity shop. These kind of basket bags with pom poms are being sold in high street chains for a pretty packet now. I’d rather save the money as I’m pretty sure the trend won’t last beyond the Summer.
Other things you could upcycle with pom poms? Sandals, lightweight scarfs, beach wraps. Just take a look in Accessorise or Monsoon for inspiration. On the homewares front you could add pom poms to the edge of a tablecloth; that’d look great on a patio table.
On to trend number two: Cacti. I love them. They’re hardy little things, easy to look after, and have a fierce attitude (you’ll see I have a tendency to anthropomorphise pretty much everything).
I have a terrarium at home and a cactus on my desk. The latter came from Urban Outfitters for an eye watering price, but I was weak and couldn’t resist the concrete and copper planter it came in. Having cacti needn’t cost a fortune though. My mum was gifted a little collection of them recently and decided to home them together in one planter. This cheery yellow number was an absolute bargain from a charity shop.
Whilst we’re talking plants and charity shops, this planter came from my local Cancer Research store for less than a fiver.
There you go, a bit of upcycling and charity shop finds in one post. On that subject, I’ll be writing about my attempts to upcycle some fabric trainers I bought in a charity shop, but that’s a tale for another day…
Treasure Trove Tales 