Tea Cup Topiary on a $0 budget

For those of you who have little girls in their lives that love everything pretty, this one is for you.  

As you know, I am officially crafting on a $0 budget this month and I am shocked at how inspired I am.  I have been looking around my house at things that I don't want to get rid of but I really have no use for and trying to see them in a new light.

I have a set of 4 beautiful tea cups and saucers that my Oma (Grandma) left me when she passed away. They are extremely special to me but I don't know what to do with them.  My daughter recently stumbled upon them and wanted to use them in her room. I debated allowing this but I really could not part with them. I know if I allow them to go into her room, I have to be willing to give them up because they might not last.

So I was at my mom's last night and she had a tea cup that she was willing to give us to use for Catrina's room. As most 7 year old girls do, Catrina loves everything pretty. If it is pink, lacy, flowery or frilly she loves it!


Initially we thought we were going to spray paint the cup white but the only flowers I had were white, so we decided to use it as is and I really do like it. Had I have know, I might even be willing to use my Oma's cups for this.

Materials (Everything I had on hand):
Tea cup and saucer (you could do it with a pretty mug too)
Flowers
Styrofoam ball
Pencil (can use a dowel)
Moss
Newspaper (can use floral foam)
RibbonTwine
Hot glue

Method:
I hot glued the cup to the saucer. You can use gorilla glue but I really wanted to be able to take this apart in the future when my daughter no longer wants it as decoration.

Using an old Styrofoam ball, I glued the flowers to it (I tried to make a snowman head out of it at Christmas and it didn't work...so I brushed off the Epson salt and glitter that was on there :)). I started with the larger flowers and filled in the gaps with the smaller ones. Where there were still small gaps, I glued petals of two flowers together.

I know I have a small dowel somewhere but I could not find them... so I glued twine to the top of the pencil and wrapped it around the entire length, gluing as I went.

Since I do not have any floral foam, I stuffed the base of the cup with newspaper. I wrapped more paper around the eraser side of the pencil and stuffed it into the cup to hold the pencil upright. When I got the pencil to the perfect spot and standing straight up, I glued the paper and the pencil with hot glue.

I attached some moss with hot glue to cover the newspaper and then glued the pointed tip of the pencil stuck it into the topiary top.

I found some old ribbon (can you see how wrinkly it is) and tied it around the twine covered pencil.

It looks very cute in my daughter's bubble gum pink room and I am glad I did not paint the tea cup.  This is not my style of decorating, but she loves it and that is all that matters to me :)

Enjoy!