Fall Topiary

I am super excited about this post!  I'm sure this project has been done somewhere by someone at some point...but I'm proud of my creation.  There is so much out there in the craft blogging world that I find myself copying projects rather than creating my own.  

I do like the look of a topiary and with fall quickly approaching I thought I'd try something that incorporated leaves.  Here are the materials (minus a wooden dowel) needed for the topiary.  I found the white tin vase at Goodwill (for 99¢...score!), the Spanish Moss, wooden dowel, and styrofoam pieces at Michael's, and the fall leaves at the Dollar Store.

 

The first thing I did was work with the leaves.  I didn't want to glue them flat onto the ball...too boring.  I needed to think of a way to create something 3-dimensional.  I ended up using a glue gun to glue the bottom part of the leaves together.  I tried using a couple of different types of glue, such as a glue stick, but it didn't stick to the material of the leaves.

Once I glued a bunch of leaves I let them cool.  If I had glued the bottom and then immediately tried to glue them onto the styrofoam, the glue at the bottom of the leaves would've melted causing them to open back up to a flat leaf (yep, I experienced that.)

The next step was to glue the leaves onto the styrofoam ball.  I spray painted the ball brown because I thought that if any of it peeked through, I'd rather it be brown than green.  I also had to put some medical tape on my thumb because when I pressed the leaves onto the ball, the hot glue transferred through the leaves and burned my thumb.  I guess I need to pick up a low-temp glue gun one of these days.

A few notes about assembling.  I spray painted the tin vase Heirloom White so it wasn't so bright white.  I also started a hole in the styrofoam with a screwdriver to make it easier to push the dowel in.  One last thing--my husband took an Exact-o knife and sharpened the end of the dowel to make it even easier to go into the styrofoam.