Floral Minnie Mouse Topiary- Tutorial

For my birthday 24th birthday last year I decided on a Flower and Garden theme inspired by Epcot's Flower and Garden Festival. I have never been to Flower and Garden but all the pictures I see online are so inspiring and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to celebrate from home.

This Minnie Mouse Topiary was one of the main centerpieces at my birthday party and its the perfect spring decoration to bring a bit of Disney magic home. Check out my Flower & Garden Inspired Birthday here.

Supplies:

Flower Pot: here

Acrylic Paint I used white

Green Boxwood Sphere 8 in (Hobby Lobby)

x2 Green Boxwood Sphere 4 3/4 in (Hobby Lobby)

Black Zip-ties (Dollar Treee) or (Hobby Lobby)

Moss Sheet (Dollar Tree): similar

Assorted Fabric spring flowers (Hobby Lobby)

Wire Cutting Pliers (Hobby Lobby)

Floral Tape (Optional): similar exact: this is the floral tape we used in my flower arranging class and its the best

Floral Wire (Optional)

Safety Pin (Optional)

Marbles (Optional) I used marbles left over from another project

Hot Glue Gun here

Floral Foam(Dollar Tree): similar

Wooden Dowel (Dollar Tree): similar mine was just under 1 inch you can cut a wooden dowel to a height you like mine was about 20 inch tall.

My wooden dowel was actually part of a rubber plunger that I got at the dollar store. It was the perfect size and height and it saved me from having to make another trip to the craft store.

First you will need two black zip-ties loop the zip tie though one of the girds toward the center of the small sphere then loop it though a grid on the large sphere. Pull the zip tie to tighten until the "ear" sits firmly and doesn't move around. Repeat for the second ear on the other side. Don't cut the excess off the zip tie until you like the spacing of your ears it makes it easier to find the zip tie to cut it off if you want to re-position your ears.

Next you will want to find the center of your topiary this should be right between the ears but on the underside. The topiary is made up of square grids under the greenery. I snipped open one of these squares on the center bottom of the topiary this is were the dowel will slid in. Make sure the dowel fits in the hole you cut, cut a small hole first and open it wider if your dowel wont fit. Try and keep the fit as tight as you can your don't want the topiary to be able to move around much.

You can leave your flower pot natural or paint it with acrylic paint. I choose to paint mine white and I love how it looks. It took several coats to get a nice solid white. You only have to paint a little bit less than half way down the inside of the flower pot sense you will only see the very top when its finished.

The flower foam I used was from the dollar store and came in small disks, 6 disks came in a package and I used 3 for this project. I stacked 3 disks on top of one another and used my wooden dowel to poke a hole in the center of the foam going though all 3 disks. My disks didn't fit all the way to the bottom of the pot but as long as they are wedged down tight so they wont move that's okay. I actually used the inch of extra space at the bottom to fill with some marble so help give the flower pot base more weight sense this topiary can be a little top heavy and I wanted to make sure it was extra stable. I then hot glued each of my disks together and glued the bottom disk a the edges to the flower pot.

Turn your flower pot upside down on a sheet of moss, I found mine from the dollar store. Trace the wide part of the pot on the back side of the moss sheet. Cut inside your traced line, check to see if it fits inside your flower pot cut off a little more from around the outside edge if needed. Then find the center of the circle and trace a hole the size of the dowel, the hole in the moss needs to line up with the hole in your foam. You could also glue down loose moss on top of the foam instead.

Now you will want to prep the flowers that you want to use to create your Minnie flower crown. The technique I'm going to describe I learned in my flower arranging class. It can be used for fresh or fake flowers, but I prefer to work with fake flowers sense they last longer. I used this technique so that my flowers would be removeable so I can change up the flowers for each season but you can skip this step and just hot glue your flowers down if you don't plan on changing up the flowers.

Use a medium-large safety pin to poke a hole straight through the base of the flower. Slide a 4-6 inch flower wire though the hole and bend at the center so the wire stem has double thickness. Wrap the wire stem with floral tape, the trick with floral tape is to stretch it and you wrap it around flower tape gets its sticky from being stretched. This technique is only needed to give flowers a stem that don't have one if they were pulled off a bigger floral stem.

Now for my favorite part of the craft getting to arrange the flower crown! I stuck my dowel down into my foam and then slid it though the bottom of the topiary. Then I started sticking flowers in and arranging them and rearranging them until I settled on a layout I loved. I felt like the dowel was secure enough with out being hot glued into the foam I also didn't glue the dowel to the topiary because I wanted to be able to take it apart for easier storage when moving sense I'm in stage of my life were I move a lot.

Happy Crafting! If you try this project I would love to see tag @meredithmakingmagic

Love Meredith