Creating a Mini Topiary Accent

This past Winter, over the holiday season, I decided to make a topiary from grapevine for the entry. I actually made two and they are currently packed away, awaiting this year's holiday season. Yes, I liked them so much I know I'll be using them again.

I kicked around the idea of bringing at least one indoors to use year-round but they are a bit large so I decided against it. During a "thrift-hunt" I found some old, terra-cotta urns that used to house a candle. I've also been seeing a lot of faux-moss covered items such as stones, wreathes, spheres, etc trending in the decorating world and am liking that look quite a bit. It is especially appropriate for the welcoming of Spring with its bright green hues. Yes, I guess I'm thinking Spring a bit early but this wacky weather here in PA says "SPRING" today so we'll just go with it.

So with a small urn-type pedestal and a Styrofoam ball, I decided to make my own indoor topiary accent.

BEFORE

The urns were a bit blah and dirty so I cleaned them up and gave them a white-wash treatment over the charcoal base color.

AFTER

The Styrofoam ball was from Dollar Tree and is 4" diameter I believe. The Spanish moss was also purchased there and is a great, green color rather than the gray-green hued Spanish moss that you typically see. They actually had numerous moss colors available at this particular location.

I painted the Styrofoam ball with a mix of green acrylic paints to mask the white color from showing through any gaps in the moss coverage to follow. Once dry, I applied the moss.

TIP: A two-pack of cheap, aluminum, rectangular pans are great for projects such as this and I reuse them over and over.

 In one pan I placed out a thin layer of the moss, working it out flat like a blanket (so to speak). The other pan was used for spraying the ball with spray adhesive. I wore latex gloves to keep the adhesive off my hands. After the adhesive got tacky (about 30 seconds), I placed the ball right in the center of the moss layer and began wrapping the moss up and over it. I then picked it up and began squeezing the moss tightly and pushing it onto areas of the ball that were showing through. I let it set-up a few minutes and then for extra security, I began wrapping the sphere (ball) with some thin, green thread. I spiraled it all around the ball a few times to help hold the moss in place.

Once done, I placed the moss sphere on top of the newly-finished urn pedestal. 

Voila! A decorative indoor topiary

I decided to go a different route with the second urn and turned it into a candle holder (which it sorta was to begin with), but this time with a glass insert to house tea-lights only.

I actually created more moss spheres yesterday in a smaller size which I'll be using in groupings so stay-tuned to see the outcome!



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