Heart Topiary

I know that I've posted a lot of Valentine craft ideas, but I've really done nothing yet in terms of decorating at home....I had some leftover tissue paper from my Valentine Wreath, so I decided to quick make a topiary....

I didn't want to spend any money, so I just used what I had around the house....cat not included!

I had the bottom of a water bottle package sitting around, so I traced a heart on the cardboard bottom......



...nothing fancy!

I used the left over tissue paper and I cut it into about 1 inch squares.....I didn't actually measure them....just eye-balled about an inch....

I then took one square and crumpled it around the end of a pencil like this...........

....then I started gluing......I think that I must have gotten a defective batch of glue sticks because I once again had glue strings galore!!



I just kept taking pieces and fitting them into empty spaces until my heart was filled like this.....

I thought that it looked a little plain, so I wanted to add a ruffle...originally I wanted to use crepe paper, but the only colors of crepe paper that I had were green, yellow and black.....none quite a match for a Valentine's topiary!

So I remembered that I had some strips of white sheets leftover from my Ruffled Shower Curtain project......



I just trimmed them to a thickness of about 1 1/2 inches......and started gluing them onto the back of the cardboard....



I just kept making folds or pleats and gluing them down.....I do think that red or white crepe paper would look better, but we were in the midst of an ice storm, so there was no travelling to get more supplies....

Hmmm....I am thinking that the ruffle may be more like a width of 2 inches.....I think that I trimmed the wide spots after it was all finished......can you SEE all the glue strings!!!

I glued a dowel rod to the whole thing, but somehow forgot to take a picture of that.....you can buy a pack of assorted dowel rods at Walmart for $0.99!  (If I was thinking, I would have stocked up on chopsticks from the chinese take-out place!) 


I then just put a glob of glue on the bottom of my Dollar Tree glass container and glued the dowel rod to it......and that pink and red confetti-type stuff??

.....construction paper through the shredder and crumbled.....cheap...I was aiming for cheap...I mean...inexpensive!

Not bad for using what I had on-hand!  And it's just sitting on a piece of burlap that I hot-glued Dollar Tree ribbon to!





While I was waiting for the picture to load, I looked at my Google Analytics and I'm giving a "shout out" to readers in Utah....you've overtaken my home state of PA in terms of most page views this past week!  WOW!!


And thank you to all the readers in Canada, Israel, the UK, Australia, Germany, Lithuania, Italy, Saudi Arabia....and so many more countries!  You all are a geography lesson for my homeschoolin' children!!  Thanks SO much for reading!

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