Ideas for Upcycling your plastic Christmas Bauble

So you have received your Folkestone Harbour Yarn Christmas Bauble 2020, and after making your crochet or knit mini stocking you don't know what to do with the plastic bauble?

Your 'blindbox' contained two skeins of hand dyed sock weight yarn, two stitch markers on a shaped  foam back and of course, the 8cm plastic bauble, which comes in two halves that click together easily to assemble it.

Because we really hate waste (especially of the plastic kind) here at FHY Towers, we've come up with a few quick crafty ideas for re-using your bauble:

Here I have used up scraps of colourful hand dyed yarn scrunched together to make a quirky and original yarn bauble. I also used a thin velvet ribbon to add a bit of christmas class!

They can be filled with buttons in different colours and re-gifted to fellow makers. Note: the buttons make them quite heavy so they may not be supported by tree branches. I also had to use a bit of tape along the join at the bottom as the button weight made them want to open.

Try different pompom sizes and colour combinations to make fun (and light) tree decorations.

Other ideas: Fill them with sweets or chocolate and add them to a christmas stocking (I couldn't take a photograph as sweets don't last long in this house!).

Lastly, your stitch markers come attached to a foam star or bauble shape. To reuse it and hide the holes made by the calabash pins (note, the foam does 'recover' if you have pressed in to it and made marks) I have used a hole punch to turn them into tags for presents and decorated them with buttons, sequins, mini pompoms, crystals and ribbon or scraps of yarn for strings. They can be written on in biro or a white adhesive label can be used on the back for names and messages. 

I'd love to see what you will do with your bauble. Share your ideas on instagram using the tag #folkestoneharbouryarn. 

If you haven't yet purchased your FHY hand dyed yarn bauble for £8 + p&p use this link. 

The free knit or crochet pattern to make your mini stocking can be found here.