Valentines Topiary Tutorial

Here is a cheap craft to add a little romance to your decor.  I think the whole thing cost me less than $5.00.  The part that took the longest was making the paper roses.  It took me about 3 hours and I didn't have enough paper to cover the whole ball.  So there is a bald spot in the back but it faces the wall so no one sees it anyway.

You will need:
1- 2.5 inch styrofoam ball
5- sheets of 12x12 paper
1- bamboo skewer
1- small terra cotta pot
a small styrofoam ball that will fit in the bottom of the pot
hot glue gun
white paint
candy hearts

To make the rosettes you just make a spiral and the bigger you make it, the fuller your flower will be.

Then you cut out the spiral and start rolling it tightly from the outside to the inside.

 If you let it loosen a little then it will have more open petals.  

I just played around with it and made lots of different ones.

When you have it how you want you put some hot glue on the tail 

end of the spiral and set the flower down on top.  

Press it down to make sure that the paper gets glued down to it.

There's the bottom of the flower.

Once you finish a flower or two you can start gluing them 

onto the styrofoam ball.  I only had 4 sheets of paper and I think 

if I had had one more sheet it would have been enough 

to fill it up.  I wish I would have covered my ball with 

some red tissue paper so that it would disguise 

the holes that my flowers didn't fill.

I sprayed the little pot with 2 coats of  chalkboard paint.  I did 

this outside and it was a beautiful sunny day so it dried fast. 

I painted the bamboo skewer with white acrylic paint and broke a little off the end so it wouldn't be so tall.  Then I pushed the pointed end about halfway into the flower covered ball.  I hot glued the small styrofoam ball down into the bottom of the little pot and then pushed the other end of the skewer down into it. 

 I filled the rest of the pot up with conversation hearts and 

drew a heart onto the outside of the pot.  The fun of the 

chalkboard pots is that you can write whatever you want on them! 

 Here's the finished topiary, I wish I knew how to take better pictures.  

I don't think I got a picture of it that really does it justice.
  I love it!  Happy Valentines!