Topiary #2

I love the look of topiaries and wanted to make another one only this time taller. You can see the first one I made here. I wanted to make it cheap and spend as little as possible. So instead of buying Styrofoam balls, I made my own balls wadding up newspaper until I got the sizes I wanted.

I gathered all my supplies, two pots (didn't know which one I liked better), newspaper balls, green paint, sticks, Deer Moss, glue gun and antiquing glaze (to antique the pot). Oh you will also need plant filler and a drill. :)

 

After forming the balls, I used a little tape just to secure the shape and then painted them green. This saves a lot of time of not having to worry about covering every little space because the white is showing through. You can also use black or brown-any dark color.

While these were drying I made my stick bundles. I already had sticks but you could even save more money and use them from the great outdoors. One for the middle of the balls and one long one for the pot. I used about 3 or 4 sticks for each bundle and hot glued them on both ends to keep them together.

Once the balls were dry, I took the drill and drilled holes where the sticks needed to go in. Once the hole is the size you need put a bunch of hot glue in the there and insert the sticks. You need to hold the sticks straight until the glue is set.

Now the fun part, gluing the moss on. I used the real deer moss and LOVED it, it is very soft and stays that way. Glue small pieces on at a time to avoid it looking too uniform. Once the balls were covered I put them in the pot.

Because again I didn't want to spend money, I jimmy rigged the pot. The ideal thing to use is probably styrofoam in the bottom of your pot and insert the sticks but I didn't have that. What I did have was baby food jars and a bunch of decor pebbles. So I filled a tall baby food jar with pebbles and inserted the sticks-surprisingly it worked. I put the jar in the bottom of the pot and then filled it with the rocks about half way and then covered it with the plant filler I had.