Recycled Mattress Cover Poms

Submitted by RyTurner / The Design Confidential
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The tissue poms and clusters are everywhere in blogland...and every time Monster Mash sees a picture he tells me how pretty they are. But frankly I am a bit tired of the tissue poms and given the allergies we suffer in this house, I thought something washable would be a better way to go. In the process of streamlining and reducing the amount of stuff we have and don't use, we are donating those things we simply don't have room for and extra mattresses were the victim of this process. Given the number of times we have moved we have an excess of those gorgeous green plastic mattress covers... enter washable recycled non-tissue poms!

For the most part I used Martha Stewart's directions for the tissue poms to make these. Her instructions call for 8 - 20x30 inch rectangles (I think) so I got out my measure and scissors and away we went!

Since the mattress cover is double sided (it's like a giant zip lock bag for your mattress) each time I cut out a square I had two... This material tends to be much heavier than tissue paper so I thought using twine would be better than a twisty tie. I measured one rectangle, cut it out and used those as the templates for the remaining rectangles. I wasn't exact and didn't care if my cuts weren't straight, I figured it would add to the pom effect!

Once my pieces were all cut and grouped together, I accordion folded them in a back and forth manner.

I tied them off with my twine and was sure to leave quite a bit of length on either end so that I could use the twine to hang them later.

After they were tied and tight, I rounded the ends of the folded plastic. Nothing exact, just enough so that they look more organic when you puff them up.

Fan it out, then pull, puff, and separate! Grab each piece and pull up toward the center until you have something of a ball shape.

Arrange, scrunch, and fluff until you like the way it looks.

There you have it... So far I have managed to destroy one out of several mattress covers and you can see them hung in MM's room here.. they create the most fabulous play of light when the sun shines in. He adores them and so do I, and I can take them right down and wipe them clean from dust! Everyone's happy...

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