Faux Poppy Pods

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As I was completing some up-cycled vases to sell through Junco Studio, I caught myself wishing for more poppy pods. They are a very sturdy dried flower and look great displayed in a variety of household decor. Poppy pods in my market booth vases will draw a buyers attention and add interest to the displays. I only have about half a dozen leftover from my gardens in Comox and won’t have a new batch here in Coquitlam until this fall. Darn, I really wanted some more poppy pods!

Necessity is the mother of invention! So off I went, diving into my hoard collection of art supplies. Within minutes, I found bamboo skewers and chop sticks for the stems plus an assortment of wooden beads for the pods!

Bamboo skewers, chopsticks and beads to make faux poppies.

My first step was to hot glue the sticks to the beads. While I was doing that process, I was figuring out a way to create to flowery top piece of poppy pods.

Poppies starting to take shape. I saved one set for my grandsons to use as drumsticks 🙂

My first attempt at the flowery part of the poppy was not successful. I used some short pieces of jute twine unravelled. It looked too tacky and I burnt my fingers with the hot glue while trying to arrange the tiny string pieces. Arg!

My next idea was to crochet a tiny flower with embroidery floss. Months ago, I thrifted a large bag of embroidery floss and a couple of small crochet hooks for under $4. Now, I was going to use them!

A tiny bit of crochet and embroidery floss to make the poppy tops.

The crocheted flowery tops are easy to make if you are familiar with crochet. I did chain 6, slip stitch into the first chain, chain 5 and slip stitch into the original first chain, repeat 3 or more times. I played with the colours for a bit of interest. Some are multi-coloured and others are simple soft pastels. Each little flowery piece took about 2 minutes to make.

I made 30 in an hour, however my morning coffee did get cold while my hands were stitching.

My next step was to add some watered down craft paints to the bamboo stems and bead tops. I used charcoal, cream, mauve, light green and a bit of yellow with a large brush. I kept the brush fairly dry, with a paper towel, so that my strokes were light and natural looking.

Using assorted, diluted craft paints I added some dry brush detail to the pod tops and stems.

I cut off the loose ends of the crocheted flowery tops and hot glued them on top of the painted bead. I chose craft paint colours that were similar to the embroidery floss colours I had been using.

The crocheted flowery top was hot glued onto the top of the bead, covering the hole.

I love them! These faux poppies look great and some even more life-like than the real ones! I think they are going to look amazing in my up-cycled vases and in other areas of my market booth display. And yes, they will also be for sale. Win-win-win morning project!

Enjoy the rest of these photos and see if you can tell which one are real and which are faux. Cheers! Lynda