DIY Mini Texas Homecoming Mums

It’s homecoming (otherwise known as #HOCO) season in Texas and that means ribbons galore for the high school kids. Moms all over our huge state are burning the midnight oil, braiding and twisting specialty ribbon, getting staple wounds, and burning their fingertips with hot glue.

Ain’t it FUN y’all?!

Being a mom to an 8 year old, we’ve been on the sidelines of the whole mum-making phenomena but I might have caught the mum fever just a wee bit. A recent tag-a-long trip to the mum store may have influenced me to whole-heartedly believe this would be good craft for our Girl Scout troop (and to legitimize my bagful of supplies) and I have masterfully figured out how to get in the game before she even hits her teens. Ready?

MINI HOMECOMING MUMS for backpacks!

My Brownies loved making mums like the big girls, and this smaller size was ideal for smaller hands and shorter attention spans. And let’s be real, the moms had fun too.

Here’s the one the Cupcake made.

Apparently there are rules to how much white a mum can have (the closer you get to senior year, the more white in your mum), but whatevers. We’re rookies at this. She did a great job. And here’s one I made for a teacher friend at school, with more adherence to the color ratio guidelines.

Clearly, I’m all in. And not bad for starter mums if I do say so myself.

So… do YOU want to make a little mini mum to sport your local team for HOCO? I get it that for the uninitiated, these look a little overwhelming so I kept ours fairly simple. No fancy braids in these baby mums, although I have posted how-to videos for those here and here if you want to step up your mum-making game. I think adding them would make these too heavy to pin onto a backpack, but you could try. 🙂

Here’s my mini-mum recipe in case you just don’t have the brain space to figure this out yet. You can use this as a guide for how much ribbon and extras that you’ll need, or follow it exactly. It’s up to you.

No, that’s not a random pink ribbon in there. It’s iridescent and caught the light funny so maybe you want to use plain white curling ribbon.

What you need:

Note: if you are in Texas, most of these supplies are available in your local craft store. The ribbon is a special ribbon for HOCO mums. You can also visit The Sale Place in Balch Springs to find EVERYTHING.

(What you see in these photos is from both locations.)

• Stapler
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun and glue
• Pin back
• Miniature mum. You can buy a tiny mum or I used finger mums and cut the elastic off.

• 2 – 3 inch Cardboard circles

• Glitter spray
• Foam mascot (or other focus piece)
• 2 very small bells
• 30 inches of curling ribbon – white
• 2 plastic accents with loops to tie ribbon to
• 13 inches of plastic star garland
• 26 inches of plastic paw garland
• 26 inches of gold (whatever) garland – cut in half (in photo, one on left says homecoming, one on right features cheerleaders)
• 27 inches of white ribbon approximately ½ inch wide
• 27 inches of your school color ribbon approximately ½ inch wide
• 27 inches of your second school color ribbon approximately ½ inch wide
• 24 inches of shiny gold/silver ribbon approximately 1 inch wide
• 24 inches of wedding floral wired ribbon in school color approximately 1 inch wide
• 27 inches of 2 inch wide ribbon (checkered or similar)
• 41 inches of ribbon with school name approximately 1.5 inches wide
• 27 inches of white “homecoming” ribbon a little over 1.5 inches wide
• 27 inches of white star ribbon a little over 1.5 inches wide
• An hour or so of time

What you do:

Take your white mum outside and spray it with glitter spray. Let dry.

Cut your ½ inch wide white ribbon into 2.5 inch pieces

Cut your ½ inch wide school color ribbon into 2.5 inch pieces

Cut your ½ inch wide second school color ribbon into 2.5 inch pieces

Cut your shiny gold/silver ribbon into 6 strips 4 inches in length. Then loop in half and staple ends together.

Cut your wired ribbon into 5 strips 4 inches in length. Then loop in half and staple ends together.

Cut your plastic paw garland in half so you have equal strips of 13 inches in length

Cut your other plastic garland in half so you have equal strips of 13 inches in length

Cut your 2 inch wide ribbon into half so you have equal strips 13.5 inches in length

Cut your school name ribbon into three strips that are 13.5 inches in length

Cut your homecoming ribbon in half so you have two strips 13.5 inches in length

Cut your white star ribbon in half so you have two strips 13.5 inches in length

Cut your curling ribbon in half so you have two pieces 15 inches in length

Staple your ½ inch wide ribbon to one cardboard disk, alternating the colors, and making sure it extends past the disk by about an inch and a half. Staple to the perimeter of the whole disk.

Next, hot glue your looped pieces of ribbon on top of the middle of the disk, leaving room for the mum. Alternate the colors.

Set this aside.

Gather your 5 widest ribbons for the background and arrange them to fan out slightly. I put the school ribbons in the middle and on the edges, the wide checkers is in between. Staple together.

Gather your star and homecoming ribbons. I positioned the homecoming over the widest checker ribbon, and the stars over the outer edge. Staple to the 5 you were just working with.

Thread your curling ribbon through the plastic accent and knot it.

Hot glue small bell where the knot is.

Repeat with other accent, keeping the length the same.

Staple curling ribbon accents to the outer edge of the stack of ribbons. After stapling, knot the top close to the staple so it won’t slide out. Trim extra.

Hot glue your plastic paw garland positioned around the widest ribbon area.

Hot glue your star garland in the middle.

Hot glue the other garland on the outer sides to balance it out. My pattern was: shiny garland, paw, star, paw, shiny garland.

Hot glue this stack of ribbon and garland to the back of your cardboard disk with the ribbons attached to it.

Turn it over, and hot glue the other disk to the back, covering the staples.

Hot glue the pin back onto the backing disk.

Flip back over and glue mum to middle.

Glue mascot accent to mum.

Let set completely.

Admire your amazing mini backpack mum!

Be sure to shake it so you can hear it tinkle!

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