Valentine Topiary

If you are looking for the Cooking with Cricut Love Song Blog Hop please go HERE

I wanted to share a project with you that I actually made for Valentine's last year, but I didn't have a blog back then so I am sharing it with you now! This is a heart shaped topiary with paper rosettes:

This project was really very simple, but I'm not going to lie- it is very time consuming! To start with you need a heart shaped piece of foam. I wasn't able to find one in a heart shape so I got a big piece of styrofoam, probably 3 inches thick, and then cut a heart from George and Basic Shapes to use as a stencil and I cut it out with a craft knife.

 When I made this topiary Cricut's Flower Shoppe cartridge had not been released yet, and if I had had it this might have been quicker and easier, but you don't need that cart (or Art Philosophy for that matter) in order to make this. I cut a whole bunch of circles in different sizes from George (2"-4") from different Valentine's themed patterned papers (they need to be double sided as both sides will show). Then I cut a spiral and rolled them up into rosettes and secured with a hot glue gun. I used a petal roller tool which made it much easier. Because my heart shape was relatively flat I could have opted to cover only the front with the flowers, and place patterned paper on the back. I actually covered the whole thing with the flowers, but either way would have been fine. I think in the end there were around 100 flowers. 

I then hot glued a pearl in the center of each flower and hot glued them to the Styrofoam base. **Here is my tip for Top Tip Tuesday: One way to make this step a LOT easier would have been to use a pearl topped pin to secure each flower to the foam, but for me buying the pearls and gluing them was MUCH more cost effective, if not more time consuming. 

In the meantime I got a regular Terra cotta pot and painted it pink with acrylic paint. I painted a dowel in the same color and bought some moss. I secured the dowel to the heart and then to a styrofoam base. I filled in the gaps with the moss and added 3 rosettes at the bottom for decoration. I tied a ribbon up the dowel and added some additional pearls. I haven't yet, but you could also add some ribbon, vinyl or other decoration to the pot to make it more decorative. 

So there is my project! I hope you have enjoyed it! I am entering my topiary in the following challenges:

Top Tip Tuesday - Valentine

For Fun Challenges - Love

Crafty Catz - Pink and white

Wags N Whiskers - home decor 

Totally Gorjuss - Love

Really Reasonable Ribbon - Red and pink with ribbon