I’ve been deliberating as to which pom poms I should use- an older set I already have at home (the silk fibres are a little squashed) or the newer set that I recently acquired in China. Although the older set has a few less balls and weren’t as full, the colours matched the colours of my head better so for now, I have chosen to use them. I will be back in China in the next few months so I’ll probably get another set that is newer and will work better with the lion.

My next consideration is how the balls should be arranged. I’ve been checking out plenty of other lion heads and getting inspiration from them. It’s interesting to see the variations where the medium sized balls are are placed in the inner ring around the mirror and the smaller balls placed in the outer ring of the mirror. In the end, given I had limited amount of balls, the best combination was not so much what I thought was the best but what worked best with the resources I had. In fact, the original LFC lion head only had one ring of balls around the mirror as well as a ring of balls around the horn. I decided to skip the ring of balls around the horn and instead added the second ring around the mirror.

Actually, now that I am looking at these images, the head is practically done!!! There are a few more finishing touches that need to be added that I haven’t done in the earlier stages like the pillow and the sequined trim around the eyes and on certain parts of the head.

It has been a slow and steady progress making this lion but it’s all coming together with putting the finishing touches.
I started off with trying to use thread to sew the bristle fur on but my sewing skills were not quite up to scratch so after a while, my impatience got the better of me and I changed tact to using metal wire to secure on the fur