Flower Topiary

I gave a little sneak peek last week and now, while the treats for our first Halloween party are baking in the oven, I'm finally here to share the finished project.  Thanks to inspiration from the super talented Kelly English-Triggs, this is the gift I created for my MIL for her birthday last week.  I cut all of the flowers using the Cricut Art Philosophy cartridge from Close To My Heart.  I don't consider myself a flowery girl, but I just can't get enough of these flowers!  I guess I like them because they won't die on me ;-)

I forgot to take a picture with the ribbon on it, so just imagine a big ribbon tied to the dowel ;-)

I cut a variety of shapes and sizes of flowers for this topiary, but I think for the next one I do I will cut all the same size and shape and hopefully it will be easier to fill the ball.  My MIL's favorite color is pink so I used Tulip, Blush, and Colonial White to cut the flowers.  I used a sponge to ink the edges of the Blush flowers using Tulip ink, and the edges of the Colonial White flowers using Baby Pink ink.  I sanded the edges of the Tulip colored flowers, which proved to be tricky as I had to be careful not to rip the paper - I will stick with sponging the edges from now on for that many flowers!  I ended up with somewhere around 80 flowers - this is on a 4" foam ball.  I had the moss in my craft stash and I really like how it looks with this project.  I am excited to create some more of these - I picked up some more pots on clearance at our local Pamida and have a lot of projects in mind, even some for myself!  I bought lots of corsage pins from our local flower shop as well so I'd better get busy using them!

Thanks for looking!