There should be pompoms for every occasion and so here are a few for Halloween! Soft ghost pompoms make great Halloween toys for tiny hands. I’ve also found out that pompoms are perfect for making hideous monsters that bigger kids will have so much fun with.

I ended up making quite a few different ones (they are great to make in your coffee break!) so I’m afraid this has become a long post. There are a few designs to choose from – ghosts, skulls, eye balls and some other Halloween characters.

The easiest ones are eye balls and ghosts and they are really fun to play with after you make them, so I hope you have a go! Skulls are a bit more tricky but I’ve made step-by-step instructions below and even if they come out a bit rough, I think manky skulls are quite lovely!

How to make a ghost pompom

1. First wrap a bit of black yarn for the mouth. For these I wrapped 4 rows wide in 2 layers to create a long howling mouth.

2. Wrap a layer of white over it and then wrap a couple of layers of black yarn for the eyes, slightly above the mouth position. That’s it for the facial features!

3. Now wrap plenty of white yarn all over. Wrap extra long yarns towards the bottom end opposite the face end, this will become the frilly bottom of the ghost. Wrap the other half of the pompom maker in solid white, and again wrap extra long yarns at one end.

4. Put together the two halves so that the long yarns are at the same end, tie up and finish as usual.

Now trim the head of the ghost into a round shape that you like and trim a bit on the sides but do not trim the long bottom end.

Done!

How to make a skull pompom

1. Start by drawing the skull design on paper and divide in half. I also marked the center of the pompom maker as an extra guide. Refer to your drawing as you follow the next steps.

2. Wrap the nose in black. Make a small triangle by wrapping a single layer on top and gradually adding more layers towards the bottom end.

3. Wrap white yarn all over the nose in a couple of layers (but not all the way down where the teeth would be) then wrap more yarn on both sides of where the eyes are going to be.

4. Wrap a good amount of black yarn in this eye area. The more you wrap, the larger the skull eyes you’ll have.

5. Wrap a little white yarn directly below the nose above what will be the teeth area. To make irregular teeth, I’ve grabbed a few mixed strands of white and black yarn and wrapped it together below the nose and extra white yarn.

6. Finish by wrapping white yarn all over in multiple layers. Make the other half of the pompom in solid white and complete. (These steps are explained in the flower pompom tutorial)

7. Trim the head round and trim extra yarn around the jaw to create the skull shape.

Ta-da! This was my first skull and it came out ok. It’s not an exact science and they’ll all have great character! You can create extra character as you trim them.

How to make eye pompoms

You can either make white ‘eyeballs’ without the background color, or make ‘eyes’ with a surrounding background.

Making eyeballs is exactly the same as making flower pompoms. For something even easier, you can make googly eyes too.

Use the diagrams below for the pompom eyes. Again, if you’re new to making pompoms and these don’t make sense to you, start with the flower pompom tutorial for the basics.

To make eyes looking sideways, have the center line vertically like the diagram on the right, starting with the iris off center.

If you make some monster mouths you can have a lot of fun by putting them together. Mix n’ match monster fun!

I can’t put step-by-steps for everything this time but hope you can try different designs and experiment! I’ll continue posting various methods and ideas that you might like. Catch up with me on Mr P’s social pages for the new ones!

I also tried a few characters for Halloween, I quite like the way they came out. No detailed tutorial just yet but I’m playing with them for a future post. Addicted! : )



