DIY Paper Rose Topiaries

In preparation for my niece's 100 day celebration, I came across these beautiful paper topiaries:

Commonplace Beauty

I don't know that I'm a topiary kind of gal but I loved the femininity of this and the fact that they are made from old books is just awesome. Simply beautiful.

I decided to try making these but since it was for a baby, I just used plain white and pink paper. 

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Here are the supplies you need:

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I was able to find most of these at the dollar store. 

Styrofoam balls, wooden dowels, ribbon, boxes for the base (you can use a pot, square box, vase, etc. These silver boxes came in a set of 2 sizes for $1.25. Done deal.

Not pictured here is the hot glue, some beads (optional) and floral foam (for the base).

You'll also need a lot of paper. You can use old books, music sheet, scrapbook paper, etc. I used plain printer paper. 

I used this tutorial to make the roses. Do a test and see what looks best with the size ball you have. I used 4" squares for the small ball and slightly larger ones for the bigger ball.

You will need A LOT of these...I made about 200 roses in total for the two balls.

So... at first your roses might look something like this:

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At this point I was starting to doubt whether I could pull this off...

But I had bought all the supplies already so I figured I'd might as well keep trying.

When I finally got the hang of rolling the spirals, they looked a lot better:

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The army of roses was starting to grow... These actually take a surprisingly long time to make. So take your time making them. Have a movie marathon and keep on cutting, rolling and gluing. 

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I started the project in the early evening and by midnight I had finished the smaller ball and about 1/4 of the larger ball.

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I thought about wrapping some white beads around the roses but instead went with silver bead in the center of some of the roses.

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Before you cover the whole ball with the roses, make sure you know where the dowel will go. 

For the base, I glued some floral foam inside the box and then pierced it with the dowel- gluing it in place to make it extra sturdy. The boxes I got are a little on the small size and since the ball has some weight to it, it kept wanting to topple over. So I got some rocks and added them to the box to help make it more bottom heavy and it seemed to do the trick.

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It cost about $10 to make both of these. Materials are really inexpensive. The time it takes to make is the real expense. So if you have the time, I say go ahead and make some!