Baby Girl Shower Topiary DIY Tutorial

I had planned to upload the baby shower invitation and share with you the online site where I made them, but alas, my puter woes continue....for some reason my wireless printer/scanner/fax is no longer communicating with my router....hubby will have to add this problem to his "honey-do" list.

So instead, today I'm sharing the topiary tutorial.  First I went to our local pottery shop, Zanesville Pottery and China in Zanesville, Ohio and purchased the 6x6 concrete pot.  The next stop was Hobby Lobby (love that store) and purchased more glue sticks, floral foam, a bag of moss,  a 6" foam ball and curly willow branches (I used 4).

I love how the pot as an aged, antique look to it, and I needed something that was heavy to support the height I wanted so this one worked really well. 

The flowers are white peonies, I used the full blooms, the buds and a few leaves.  I already had them from Michael's.

I removed the moss from it's bag and filled my sink with warm water, pushed all the moss down into the water until the bubbles quit coming to the surface and let it soak for about an hour (this really rehydrates the moss and plumps it back up to normal).  Then I drained the water and let the moss drain for another hour in the sink before laying it all out on dishtowels to dry overnight.

Hubby made a hole in the 6" foam ball and I hot glued the curly branches into it, then cut the floral foam to fit into the pot, making a hole in it as well for the bottom of the curly branches (this is the one thing I should have done better, it needed more stability).

I then pulled all the blooms, buds and leaves off their stems and proceeded to hot glue them to the 6" foam ball.  When that was finished and the moss completely dry, I pulled to moss sections apart to fit around the top of the floral foam at the base of the curly branches.

My plan was to place the topiary on the gift table, then my daughter could take it home with her to be part of the nursery decor.  When she saw it, she loved it but wanted a bit of pink added to it.  So I glued some pink geranium blooms in a few places, then we decided to add a couple of blooms to the moss to look as though they had "fallen" from the top. 

We were all very pleased with how it turned out, but getting it to the shower was a challenge, I did not have it stable enough in the base and we had to do some repair work at the shower.

The baby shower was held in the basement of our church and since there was no air-conditioning (and it was HOT), we had to use a couple of fans which really helped , but as you can see in the following photo, our poor topiary that had been through quite an ordeal getting to the shower, was starting to lean.

We also used a few large white ostrich feathers (also purchased at HL when they were 50% off as they were expensive) placed them in pretty glasses on different tables, and the fans of course made them lean as well. 

I used all glass candy dishes, serving dishes, vases and glasses that were either borrowed from my mom and mother-in-law, the rest were purchased on the cheap from goodwill (I'm also addicted to goodwill) and yard sales.

Needless to say, once the nursery is finished, I'm going to have to do some more repair work before we can display it.  If anyone has any suggestions for making it more stable in the bottom of the pot, I'd love to hear them!!!!