Fall Pumpkin Topiary

Fall is soooooooo my favorite time of year!  I love the weather, the colors, the festivities AND the decorating!  This year, I don't have a plant in the urn on my front porch.  Poor thing didn't stand a chance in the Texas heat!  So I decided to make a pumpkin topiary to dress up my front porch.

I got all supplies for this topiary at Michaels.  The pumpkins were half off this week.  Because the white ones were so stark (and still look that way in the photo, though they're not) I used an antiquing medium mixed with several drops of brown re-inker and coated each pumpkin with it.  It gives an aged or slightly distressed/worn look.  I hot glued those together (after cutting off the stems) and added leaves between, where the hot glue was exposed. 

I didn't have enough leaves so I used my Cricut (Stretch Your Imagination, Wild Card) to cut some more.  I sprayed the leaf die cuts with water, scrunched them up and then dried them with my heat tool.  I inked the raised portions and the edges and they looked like beautiful fall leaves!  I hot glued those to a grapevine that I wrapped around the pumpkins.  I also added some brown raffia, twisted around the grapevine.

I set it in the urn, added some moss around the edges (sprayed with Ortho Max...no bugs allowed!!!) and I now have a pretty cool-looking decoration on my porch!

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!  :)

Dimensional Paper Flowers

I made some paper flowers a few days ago for a wall hanging using instructions provided by Marta Gladden, but I decided to come up with some new varieties, for a special project that is currently in the works.  I didn't ink these or emboss them, as there are a LOT of them and I think that kind of detail would get lost with the project I'm using these for.  :)  If you want to see my project, check back in a day or two...I'll be posting photos.  :)

As always, I used my Cricut for these little guys:

Pink Rose (New Arrival)

Yellow Spider Mum (Accent Essentials):

White Spider Mum (Accent Essentials):

Red Star Flower (Stretch Your Imagination):

Coral Hibiscus (Storybook, Home Accents):

Yellow Daisy (Walk In My Garden, Stretch Your Imagination):

(didn't notice the hot glue string on this one until I photographed it...oops!)

The leaves are cut with Storybook.  These aren't hard at all, they just take a little patience.  Okay, a HUGE, TON, GOB of patience!  :)  But I think they're worth it.  Can't wait to finish my project...be sure to check back!

Thanks for looking and have a creative day!  :)