Valentine Topiaries

Well, here they are, the Valentine's Topiaries. I CASEd this idea from http://www.sarastudio.blogspot.com/ . I saw hers and knew i had to have them. I had this little metal "gift bag" container for several years and never really knew what to do with it. Then i thought "ah HA!" So you can look in her blog for instructions on how to make this one. Not very hard... you can probably figure it out. I will say that it was very helpful to realize that if i cut apart the bottom of the heart form i can stick the dowel between the two halves of the bottom of the heart. i sort of filled in the gap with low temp hot glue. That cherub on the heart, there are a lot of them showing up in my valentine crafts. I have an entire box of them, they are actually Christmas ornaments! I figured that white Cherubs were Valentine's as well as Christmas. i suspect that you will be seeing a lot of those little angels in my crafts since i have literally close to 50 or so of them.

The next one i did i used a little tin bucket, someone had given me with candy in it last year, for the base. I had started a craft years ago with styro balls, sequins, seed beads and straight pins. I just knew i had extra balls in the attic somewhere. Well, i didn't find any naked balls, but i did find this one...and thought it would surely work.

The only problem...the ball was too heavy. it made the whole thing top heavy. Well, as i have already stuffed the "bottom" with Styrofoam and don't want to pry it out. I have a small hole, the size of a dowel where i had tried to insert the topiary into the base. Hmmmm, small rocks to weight it down? No small rocks in sight. Plaster? YES! that is what i need. not only will it weight the bottom, it will help hold the dowel in place. Off i go to start rummaging. I come back with a small bag of powdered plaster, no instructions of course. I figure it can't be that hard, i have made plaster before, just add warm water ....

so this is what i ended up with. I poured the plaster into the hole and filled up the base, then inserted the stick, and waited for it to dry! yippee! it doesn't fall over anymore! How many people would think of plaster and then actually HAVE it in their house? I was proud all my hording had paid off. THIS is why you never throw things away!!!!

and this is the finished product. I found some tinsel stuff 90% off at Hobby Lobby, that is the stuff that looks like Easter Grass around the bottom. It is silver and red...PERFECT for Valentine's day! I hope you enjoy looking at what i have done and i hope it inspires you to do a little something for yourself! Hopefully i will have one more topiary done in the coming days, my plans are to have three but who knows.