Paper Topiary

Spring is finally in the air! After what seemed to be an extraordinarily long and harsh winter, I see signs of spring everywhere and I am loving it. It makes me want to create paper projects in bright and springy colors!

Today I’m bringing you a fun little project that will add a burst of spring color to your home decor. This paper topiary ball looks really complicated but it isn’t. It’s comprised of 20 circles and once I show you how to put it together, you’ll be amazed at how simple it really is.

I chose to use Sweet Memories by Sugarplum Paperie and Danielle Engebretson Designs. I love the bright springy colors and patterns in this kit’s papers.

To make my life easier, I created a little layered template that uses 1.75″ circles for this project. To make your life easier, I have uploaded that template here. It contains the lines for the circles and equilateral triangles as well as twenty layers of circles you can use as clipping masks for your digital papers. It would be a good idea to reduce the opacity on the lines layer so you can barely see them once you print out your sheet. I left my lines at 100% so they would be easy for you to see.

For this project I used:

Sweet Memories by Sugarplum Paperie and Danielle Engebretson Designs
1.75″ circle punch
glue dots adhesive
bamboo skewer
glass jar
3-d foam adhesive
spring colored M&M candies
1/2″ wide white grosgrain ribbon

Here is what my completed document looked like before I printed it.

I also wanted a band to go around my glass jar, so I created a rectangle that was 8″ long and 2″ high. I created another rectangle that was 8″ long and 1.5″ high. I added a drop shadow with a distance of 0, a spread of 8 and a size of 8. Then I added a few other elements to the remaining white space and I printed the whole thing.

After printing, I used my 1.75″ punch upside down to “fussy punch” the circles. By holding the punch upside down, I was able to see exactly where I was punching.

After punching 20 circles, I let my hand rest a little before moving on to the next step where I used my bone folder to fold up each edge of the circle along the line.

Once all of the edges were folded up, I laid out my circles to get an idea of how I wanted the papers to be arranged on the ball. Then I started attaching each circle to the next one using a glue dot, like this:

I attached five circles together for the top and five circles together for the bottom.

Once the top and bottom were finished, I laid out my remaining 10 circles to figure out their placement on the ball.

I attached these 10 circles in a straight line so that one triangle pointed up and the next triangle pointed down. I ended up with a strip that looks like this:

Once I finished adhering the 10 circles in a line, I attached the first circle to the last one to connect them all together and make the middle of the ball.

Don’t worry that it’s not perfectly round right now. It’ll fall into shape much better once the top and bottom have been attached.

I added sticky dots to each flap on the middle portion, and then added the top. I repeated the process for the bottom. And voila! I have a paper ball!

Because I used sticky dots to hold my ball together, it’s easy for me to pinch the ball together and make a hole in the bottom where I added the bamboo skewer. I tied the white ribbon at the base of the ball, filled the glass jar with the spring colored M&Ms, attached the band and tag with adhesive, and then placed the skewer into the M&M-filled jar.

I added a birthday sentiment stamp from the Banners4All set by The {Stamps} of Life on the heart tag element and then attached the tag to the jar with 3-D foam adhesive.

You could make several of these to adorn a party buffet table – wouldn’t they look cute as balloons for a birthday party?

If you make this project, I would love it if you left a comment with your gallery link so I can see what you made!

Thanks for stopping by!

Paper Topiary

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