Recently, decorating the interior of a room or office with topiary has gained great popularity. These are small artificial trees installed in pots or other containers. The upper part of the craft is made from a wide variety of materials and any shape is chosen as the basis. It can be a cone, a heart, a ball or a circle covered with coffee grains, artificial flowers or small fruits, pom-poms or folded pieces of organza. In the article, we will tell beginners how to make topiary from satin ribbons, what needs to be prepared, how to fasten crafts from strips of fabric on the base, and present options for such trees with photographs of samples.
Tree crown
The main part of the work on topiary production will be crown design. First of all, you need to get a foundation. It is most convenient to use the foam parts purchased in the required shape. It can be cones, balls, hearts, rings, a contour heart made of foam. They are sold in sewing accessories stores or in the stationery departments for needlework.
If you have not found a ready-made basis, then you can do it yourself from old magazines or newspapers. It is necessary to form a ball of any size from crumpled paper, then wrap the workpiece with simple threads around the circumference so that the base becomes dense. If you want to make another shape, for example, a heart, then you have to act a little differently. For manufacturing, you will need a balloon, construction foam, threads. First inflate and stretch the rubber of the ball. Then blow some foam into the hole, but do not forget that it expands significantly, so you need not to overdo it, otherwise the ball will burst. Then, when the foam begins to grip slightly, the ball is tied up and shaped like a heart with his hands. Then we leave the workpiece for complete drying, then it remains only to cut off the rubber and smooth out the irregularities of the figure with a knife. With this method, you can make the base of any shape.
Artificial tree trunk
For beginners, satin ribbon topiary is best done on an even trunk. To do this, you can use part of a tree branch, a sleeve from napkins, a plastic tube. When you learn how to do simple crafts, you can implement any creative ideas, for example, to produce a spiral-shaped barrel or with several branches. For such original crafts, you will need a thick wire in the shell, a wrapping material - fabric, paper, threads, ribbons, a bandage, gauze, etc. When the trunk acquires the required thickness, the surface can be beautifully wrapped with a green or brown satin ribbon.
Tank for installing topiary
To begin work on the topiary from satin ribbons, you need to think over the question of where it is better to place it. Artificial trees fixed in flower pots look beautiful. You can use a cup, kettle, can, tin box, that is, any capacity. Strengthen the barrel in the tank in various ways. You can insert a stick into a dense foam for fresh flowers, but the cost of such an craft will be expensive. Some people fill the container with small pebbles, but such a tree, under the weight of the crown, can tilt, it would be undesirable to move it from place to place.
The most reliable way to strengthen the topiary from satin ribbons is to knead a solution of gypsum and water to a state of thick sour cream and, after inserting the trunk into the center of the container, pour the gypsum solution into the pot. So that the stick is perpendicular to the table, and the topiary is level, you can cut a cardboard ring and put it on the top of the pot, and after the mixture has hardened, simply cut the cardboard with scissors.
Simple craft
After the stick wrapped in ribbons with gypsum mortar is strengthened, work begins on the design of the base for the crown of our tree. Consider the simplest version of a satin ribbon topiary. Based on contour hearts made of foam. As can be seen in the photo below, in one cylindrical-shaped container, two spiral trunks of wire wrapped in a thin silver satin ribbon are fastened at once.
Hearts made in this way can be presented to newlyweds for a wedding or married people on the anniversary of their life together. For a man, a heart is wrapped with a blue ribbon, for a wife - pink or red. The edges of the winding are fixed to the foam using a glue gun.
The topiary is made of satin ribbons as follows: on a pink base, a flower with a bead is attached at a central point, a flat bow is tied at the bottom of a blue heart. You can stick it on the stem or on the bottom of the craft. In the end, it remains to string the hearts on the edge of the wire, smeared with a glue gun or PVA glue.
So that the frozen gypsum solution is not visible, the top surface in the pot is filled with filler. It can be glued coffee grains, buttons, tinsel, confetti, it can be wrapped with regiline, laid with sisal.
Ribbon curls
You can make a topiary of satin ribbons with your own hands from cut pieces of different ribbons. They can differ not only in color, but also in the structure of the fabric, thickness and quality. The colors must be selected with taste, it is advisable to use no more than two shades of the same color and any basic one, for example, yellow, light yellow and white or pink, red and white.
When the blanks for the topiary of satin ribbons are cut, you need to roll a ring from each segment and fasten the edges with a glue gun. When many details have been made, begin to attach them to the spherical base. Place them tightly to each other so that the foam is not visible, alternating colors, shades and the direction of the loop. When the entire surface is covered, the ball is strung on a stick and hardened with glue.
The container is decorated in tone with ribbons by staining with paint or wrapping with a cloth. You can wrap the jar in corrugated paper and tie a bow from a ribbon.
Rose Topiary
You can make many colors from satin ribbons and attach them with a glue gun to the base. Consider the option of making beloved by many roses. Flowers can be made from one ribbon, or you can create a bouquet of colorful crafts.
Flowers of different sizes will also look beautiful. In the photo below, look at the topiary of blue satin ribbons. Large white beads are attached between the flowers, creating an additional volume to the crown of the tree.
How to make roses
To make a topiary of satin ribbons with your own hands from roses, you must first learn how to make them. There are many options, consider one of them in more detail. The flower has many details. This is the middle, rolled up from a length of 12-15 cm, and the petals. For each item you need to prepare 10 cm of tape. The first thing is going to the middle of the flower. The photo shows how to fold the tape several times and tie it on a strong thread from the bottom.
Then the workpiece is set aside, and work continues on the petals. First, the segment is folded to the wrong side so that the cut edges lie exactly on the base, forming a right angle. The edges are fastened with pins and subsequently sewn with stitches. When many petals are harvested, you can start collecting a topiary rose from satin ribbons. One by one, the petal is sewn step by step to the central part with the face up. You can simply glue them with a glue gun.
Assembling the ball for the topiary
When the rose is made completely, you need to cut the excess ribbon from the bottom of the flower, evening the bottom surface. For ease of attachment to a foam base, you can first attach each flower to a round piece of fabric. Begin work on sticking directly to the ball from the top, moving in circles around the layers. Attach parts tightly with a glue gun, combining colors if desired.
Additionally, the craft can be decorated with leaves, beads, other flowers. Plastic insects, such as a ladybug or a dragonfly, look interesting on crafts.
Topiary sunflower
Satin ribbons can be used to make sunflower petals using the kanzashi technique. The basis for such a topiary needs to choose a round shape. The hemisphere will also look beautiful. To do this, the foam ball is cut in half. The middle of the sunflower is filled with seeds. They can be made from coffee beans by gluing a hemisphere in the middle. The edges are covered with layers of yellow or light orange petals.
You can collect them in a variety of ways, consider the further implementation of the simplest petals.
How to make thin petals
The yellow ribbon is cut into equal lengths. They will be needed quite a lot, since only a sunflower with a large number of details collected in several layers looks beautiful. Work on each element is time-consuming, so be patient. Each piece is cut on one side with an acute angle. This is the outer edge of the petal. So that the fabric does not split up and looks neat, you need to melt the cut edges with a candle or a lighter. The lower even edge of the satin ribbon is also fused and folded in half with the wrong side up.
To glue these halves, it is more convenient to use tweezers. Then the petal is leveled and laid aside. Work begins on the next element. When the preparatory work comes to an end, we begin the assembly of the sunflower onto the foam base. The stalk of the sunflower is quite voluminous, therefore the stick needs to be wrapped with a cloth several times. Green leaves are attached below, and the craft is ready.
Now you know how to make topiary yourself from satin ribbons, a master class will help beginners to master this art. If you have never worked with ribbons, then before making an artificial tree, first practice making petals, flowers, bows from them. You can try to make light crafts by simply wrapping the ribbons around the base or gluing loops, and only then take on roses or a sunflower. Have a good start!