Ribbon Topiaries Tutorial

When researching cute ideas for Belle’s birthday I found ribbon topiaries. They are so cute but I wasn’t about to spend $30 plus dollars on just one. I looked around online and found instructions for them that are simple. So I got the bright idea to make a couple for Belle’s party. I made two before I decided to make this tutorial. They are simple but can be time consuming.

What you need:

Styrofoam Ball - whatever size you prefer

Straight Pins

Wooden Dowel

Ribbon – lots of ribbon

Flower Pot – or whatever you prefer to be your base

Flower Styrofoam Block

Tulle, cut paper, anything you want to use to cover the Styrofoam block

Step 1:

This is probably the most time consuming. You have to cut you ribbon. I cut mine into to 3 inch strips. Because I don’t really care about being exact my strips range from 3” to about 4 1/5”. They do not have to be perfect. You are going to need a ton of ribbon for one topiary. For this one I used 3 spools of 30 feet ribbon, 2 spools of 5 feet ribbon and some left over ribbon from the first two.

To get a better idea of how much I used. On the first topiary I made it was about an 8” diameter ball. I used 6 different spools of ribbon ranging from 5 feet to 12 feet. I had about 5 strips left over.

My personal preference when making three of these was to not use too many different kinds of ribbon. If I used to many it looked cluttered and a mess. My favorite is the first one I made. I used 6 different ribbons and used a smaller ball.

Step 2:

Now that your ribbon is cut you can start pinning them to your ball. Take your first ribbon, roll it so the two ends overlap and the ribbon makes a circle. Take your straight pin and stick it in the middle of the overlapped ends. Take the ribbon and push it into the Styrofoam ball. Keep doing this in any pattern and order you want until the ball is completely covered.

Step 3:

Take your styrofoam black and push it to the bottom of your flower pot or bucket. If you are using a flower pot that has a hole at the bottom you are going to want to glue something on the inside to cover the hole. I cut a paper plate and glued it in.

Step 4:

Take your wooden dowel (I painted mine since they were unfinished) and stick in to the bottom of your Styrofoam ball. If it is lose you may want to hot glue it. Once the ball is attached you can stick the dowel into the block in your flower pot. This needed hot glue as well. Without it mine leaned a little.

Step 5:

I used pink tulle in the flower pot to cover the styrofoam block. I also tied a ribbon around the flower pot to dress it up a little. Fluff up any ribbon that looks flat and enjoy!

Super easy and so cute!