Egg Topiary Repost

Friday, February 22, 2013

Egg Topiary Repost

Since Easter is not far off, I thought I would repost my Egg Topiary project. I have seen many nice looking faux eggs at the craft stores, so you can possibly skip painting the plastic eggs!

I am continuing the egg theme from the last post with an egg topiary. My inspiration comes from an egg topiary featured in the Williams and Sonoma Spring catalog. I really liked the look of the topiary and wanted to create my own version of it. I found the faux eggs at Hobby Lobby, however they only came in a pastel mix so I painted them blue. This is a step you can easily skip if you would rather have a pastel egg topiary. If you can find faux natural or blue eggs even better so you do not have to bother painting. You can easily create this topiary and have it out all Spring to enjoy.

For this project you will need:

Styrofoam Florists Cone (mine is from Michael's sized 98mmx301mm)

Faux Eggs-small and regular sized eggs (I purchased mine from Hobby Lobby, I used 2 small packs of regular sized eggs, and 2 small bags of small eggs)

Moss (I picked up my bag at Dollar Tee)

Hot Glue Gun

Container or flower pot for the topiary

If you would like to paint your eggs you will need:

Acrylic paint in Light Blue/aqua (I used Folk Art brand Sky Blue)

Acrylic paint in Brown.

Paint brush (small and regular)

To start decide if you would like your eggs the color they are, or if you would like to paint them blue.

If you would like them blue like mine, lay them on one side or prop in a container and paint one side at a time with the blue paint and regular sized brush.

Let Dry before flipping and painting the other side.

To create the speckles mix some brown acrylic paint with water so the paint is thin a drippy.

Dab some brown paint onto your small paint brush. Make sure you are working outside or an area where paint can splatter (or cover the area well with paper towels). Holding the brush about a foot and a half over the eggs take your free hand and firmly tap on your hand holding the paint brush to create a spray of speckles onto the eggs.

If you get too big of a brown paint blob just paint over it in blue when dry.

Create the Topiary:

Start by removing approximately 2" of the top of the florist cone so that it isn't so pointy. You can use a knife to slice the tip off.

Hot glue one of the regular sized eggs onto the top of the cone. The glue takes a minute to set so hold onto the egg until it stays put.

Then start hot gluing a couple rows of the smaller eggs near the top of the topiary. Place them randomly with space in between them.

Continue attaching eggs down the topiary again randomly gluing regular sized ones with some small ones in between.

Don't glue the eggs too tightly together as we will be filling the gaps with moss.

Once completed gluing all your eggs on the topiary start to fill the gaps with moss.

Make sure you put your topiary on a piece of newspaper or paper towel as the moss is messy.

Fill in a gap between the eggs with hot glue.

Immediately push a small clump of moss into the hot glue and use the back of a paint brush or a stick to press the moss firmly into the hot glue.

Fill in all the gaps with moss and put your topiary into a pot of your choice. If you see any brown paint spots you don't like just touch them up with blue paint.