Kitchen Mini Makeover ~Topiary

Here is one of the projects I made as part of my kitchen window makeover.  I really wanted a topiary to sit on one of the shelves.  I was hoping to find a styrofoam ball at the dollar store, but all they had were square ones or the wrong size.

I was determined to keep this project really cheap, so I bought a bag of balloons, blew one up to size and wrapped it is yarn-covered glue.  I let it sit for a day until it was dry and solid, and then I popped the balloon.  You can see it pictured below.

 For this fund little topiary, I used my yarn ball, an unsharpened pencil, a flower pot that I painted gray, and lots of red felt. I spent a dollar on the pack of balloons, so this project was basically free, because I had the other supplies (my mom gave me the pot).

I was skeptical about using the yarn ball.  I was really worried that it would collapse.  But, I used lots of glue, and about a month later, it is still sitting strong. :)  To cover the ball, I cut up a bunch of red felt strips and hot glued them on.  I stuck the end of a pencil inside one of the holes in the ball and hot glued.  Then, I secured it by gluing felt to the pencil and anchoring it down.  Surprisingly, it was a pretty tight hold.

I was going to cut a bunch of circles and make little pom-poms to cover the whole thing, but I changed my mind really fast, knowing that it would take way too long!  I decided to use squares instead.  I just eye-balled them, so they are about 1" squares.

I ended up using all of the red felt that I had leftover, and had barely enough.  I just love when this happens.  Anyways,  fold the square in half two times and place a dab of hot glue in the center.

I started hot gluing the pieces to the ball side opposite the pencil.  I turned them random directions so it didn't look uniform.

I secured the pencil a little bit better with more felt as I got closer to getting the ball completely covered with felt squares.

I wrapped some burlap around the pencil several times to add some fun texture and color.  I wrapped it a couple of times to make the base look thicker.

I filled the base with rocks that I bought at the dollar store...oops, I guess I spent $2 for this project.  Still awesome though, right?

Here it is all covered and almost finished.  There is just one more finished touch...