My dream topiary

This project is an oldie. I made it about a year ago, but to this day, it's one of my favorite decor pieces. This whole topiary obsession began a few years ago and I even had topiaries for my own wedding.

My wedding centerpieces

But my love for topiaries didn't stop there, and as I type this I realize it might not ever completely go away :) There is this spot in my house where I've always wanted to put a plant. Let's just say it is a death zone. No plant has ever survived and I just started feeling bad for the poor innocent plants and stopped trying. But I wanted a little bit of green in that area, so a green topiary seemed like the natural thing to do.

One of my biggest decorating challenges is that I don't live in the US and in my tropical rainforest world, most of the time I have to improvise. My inspiration came from another blog Scissors & Spatulas, and in her tutorial, Jen just bought the topiaries. As most of my projects, this one started with a ray of light from heaven pointing me in the direction of the right materials. I found the artificial baby tears at my favorite Chinese store and the whole thing just came to life.

Topiaries from Scissors & Spatulas
scissorsandspatulas.com/2011/02/ballard-inspired-boxwood-topiaries.html 

My saint husband was skeptical to say the least. We had just moved into our new house and I was finally starting to let my creative juices flow. But I was on a mission! So I bought the artificial baby tears, a styrofoam ball, green paint, cold silicone glue, and used some BBQ sticks I had home. 

First, I painted the ball green, though any kind of dark color will do. You just want to make sure the white ball is not showing through the greenery. I used the BBQ sticks to not get paint all over my hands and help it dry more evenly.

Once it was completely dry, I started the gluing process. Though I used cold silicone glue to do this because I absolutely hate hot silicone glue, I think I might recommend using the hot instead. The process is going to be faster. 

For the pot, I just used the base of a candlestick I already had. 

 

I loved the way it looked and the final product even more. The total cost for this project was about $7, a bargain compared with store-bought topiaries that range between $30-40 or even more if you go to high-end stores.