Thursday Tutorial - Fabric Topiary

Hello! Rachel here from Cricut with Heart , and today I'm sharing a tutorial on how I made a fun little fabric topiary home decor item.  

Isn't that fun?! I made this for Valentine's Day, but afterwards I simply removed the "Valentine" lettering, and the heart candies so now I have it on my entry table for a Spring Time home decor item.  

It's pretty easy to make. I used a 3" round smooth foam ball, a wooden skewer, and a small ceramic pot from Michael's. 

I cut out yellow squares approximately 1" and pink squares about 1 1/2" out of my textiles from Close to My Heart. These are a nice light fabric in fun colors and perfect for this kind of project.  As long as your fabric is not too heavy, it should work.

You'll need to cut a lot of squares, but they don't have to be perfect.  I just cut more as I went on until the ball was completely covered. I used my Inscriblio tool to push the square into the foam since it has a small ball at the tip and didn't push all the way through the fabric. You could use an embossing stylus, but I couldn't find mine at the time (LOL)!

Simply place a square onto the foam ball, and push it into the foam with your stylus!

Continue doing this and space out the larger pink squares into flower clusters and then fill in the space around them with the smaller yellow squares.

Add the wooden skewer to serve as the stem, and wrap a strip of the green fabric around it by using strong double sided tape at the top and the bottom. Tie a strip of the green fabric into a bow on the stem to make the "leaves".

Add foam to the bottom of the pot, and stick the stem into this for stability. The final touch is adding this fun little butterfly at the top.

Now we'll get to use our Cricut by cutting out the butterfly from page 58 of the Artiste booklet at 1 1/2".  Then I got some of my pink craft wire, and cut a piece and twisted it together from the middle but left the ends separated to make the antennae.

On the back side, I used a strong double sided tape to attach the wire which will also be used to attach it to the foam ball.

I embellished the front of the butterfly with some Bitty Pearls. Cute, huh?

Here is how it looks attached to the fabric ball.

Happy Crafting!