Book Page Topiary

Here begins the bundle of new decorations made for our new house.. less than 2 weeks till the move, lovely cottage here we come.. I thought it needed a few little homemade goodies to make it more homely.. So i made a topiary where the flowers are made from old book pages, there's so many pages left going spare so I feel a few more projects coming on..

I've used:

• gunmetal grey drawing pins
• charity shop book
• 2 flower arranging foam balls
• 1/8" wooden dowel
• small terracotta pot
• ivory ribbon
• half styrofoam ball
• brown glass pebbles
• rock salt paint
• chcolate paint
• hot glue gun
• shingle

To make the flowers I drew spirals on book pages (making sure all the pages I used had text on so they matched), then I used paperglue to twist the pages to form a flower shape. The scrappy egdes on the flowers created a fab distressed look and helped with making the pages look more vintage.
I pierced the foam balls onto the dowel, glued the balls to the dowel and then painted the dowel chocolate brown. After painting the pot, I filled it with shingle to balance the weight of the topiary, and glued half a styrofoam ball over the top of the shingle to the sides of the pot. When the dowel was dried I put it through the styrofoam and glued it into place.
To secure the flowers to the foam balls I used the hot glue gun and drawing pins. I tried just using drawing pins but they just didn't hold the weight, so they became just aesthetic and the glue did all the work. After many hours of cutting and sticking flowers, not to mention burning my fingers with the glue gun many times, I made it to the fininshing touch.. the ivory ribbon bow tied around the dowel... Now I just hope it looks lovely in the new house to make it worth all the work!

I've linked this project to:

The Shabby Nest- frugal friday

Tatertots & Jello- weekend wrapup party

A Little Lovely- saturday soiree