St Patrick's Day Ribbon Topiary

Since St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner, I wanted to share with you all some DIY decorations. I was once again inspired by Pinterest for this one, and also once again, my inspiration was abundant. I saw so many adorable ribbon topiaries that I just had to make one of my own!

I love decorating my mantle for all the holidays and I felt it was a tad lacking in St Patrick's day decor so a topiary would be perfect for a tall decoration that I thought was needed to balance everything out.

I googled ribbon topiary and quickly read a great tutorial from Catch my party member just to see if the way I was going to make my topiary was similar to others. Sure enough it was. It's really a very simple process.

Here are the supplies I used:

-Several spools of ribbon (I used different widths and patterns)

-scissors
-push pins

-foam ball

-skewer stick or dowel 

-pot, box, vase or whatever you want to be the base

-foam to push the skewer stick into

-rocks to balance your base

-whatever pretties you want to cover the top of your base

-optional paint for stick

I actually bought some if my supplies at *gasp* full price for this one because I couldn't wait for a good deal to fall into my lap. I went to Walmart and saw all the pretty, sparkley ribbon and I was drawn in like a moth to flames. I am SUCH a sucker for sparkley, glittery bejeweled anything. 

So yes, I paid full price for a few spools of ribbon at $1.49 each. But of course I hit up the clearance ribbon and hit the jackpot on green ribbon. Four spools for $1. I also paid a whopping $2.97 for a foam ball and $2 for push pins.

I bought a cute, well it wasn't really cute until I painted it white, pot at Salvo for 59 cents that already had foam in it. It's the perfect size for my mantle. All my other supplies, skewer stick, rocks and paint, I already had.

I gathered my supplies and started by pushing the skewer stick into the foam ball and then pushing that piece into the middle of the foam in the pot. I stuck some rocks into the base to weigh it down since the ribbon ball will be top heavy once completed. I also painted the skewer stick white to match the pot.

I then cut out five 3 1/2" to 4" strips of each of my different ribbons. I vastly underestimated and ended up needing about 15-20 strips of each ribbon by the time I was finished. Jackson hung out with me at the table and played with his "sand" pretty much the whole time. It was nice and relaxing...for a change.

Placing/pinning the ribbons on the topiary is extremely easy. First I wrapped the ribbon into a circle, slightly overlapping the ends.

I had two different sized ribbons so for the larger ribbons I used two pins on either end of the overlapping part of the wrapped ribbon. For the smaller ribbons I only used one pin in the middle of the overlapping part of the wrapped ribbon. When the topiary was fairly full I started using one pin for the larger ribbons since it was easier to squeeze them in that way.

I made sure to stagger the ribbons and alternate directions so the same kinds would not end up next to each other. If you don't like where you put one, you can just pull it out and put it in another place that looks more pleasing.

I jammed packed my topiary because I really like the full look. I ended up having to put more rocks in the base to hold my skewer stick up and squeezing some glue around the rocks and the stick. I put a little bit of moss on top of the rocks for some green color. I didn't glue the foam ball to the skewer stick so that if I happen to want to make a ribbon topiary for another holiday I can use the same pot that works so great for my mantle.

The topiary really balances out my St Patrick's Day mantle. It almost looks like a cute little tree at first glance.

All in all I spent around $11, which isn't my thriftiest crafty project but I guess they can't all cost $2.