Fourth of July Ribbon Extravaganza

I have no Fourth of July decorations. I am a bad American.

I have seen ribbon topiaries all over blogland and thought I'd try my hand at it. I've been wrist-deep in ribbon all afternoon, but it did turn out pretty well.

I found some great ribbons in red, white and blue at Michael's and it was all on sale. Can we say jackpot? Yes... yes we can. So I grabbed it and ran for home like a kid with a ticket to the chocolate factory.

Look how pretty.

I cut the ribbons into 4 inch strips and stuck a straight pin to make them little circles.  I saw this method on a blog somewhere, but I didn't write down the name... which is a shame 'cause it was an awesome blog. (I FOUND IT! It was on A Diamond in the Stuff, find it here!)  At any rate, I made a billion of those little ribbon circles while watching some episodes of 'Roseanne' on Netflix.  Gotta love Netflix.

I stuck the straight pins into a foam craft ball until I had a full ribbon firework topiary display.  That's what I'll call it.  This project took time, but was easy to make and it turned out so cute!

Doesn't it look like a head of hair?  I should have drawn a face on it and named it like Tom Hanks did to that volleyball in that one movie.  I spray painted a flower pot and put the ball on a dowel and into the pot.  The finished product looked like this:

You're going to have to forgive the picture quality.  I'm saving up for an awesome camera... I'm also writing to the Canon company everyday in hopes of a free camera but evidently they don't believe that I'm a celebrity who would love to be a spokesperson for their cameras.  Probably 'cause I'm not.

This turned out really cute... but I needed something else.  I saw a tutorial about making 3D stars out of a cereal box, so off to my cupboard I went.  I traced out two stars onto the cardboard and cut them out.

Next, I took a ruler and scored lines from the outer points of the star to the inner point of the star on the opposite side... like so:

Yes, you need to do this on the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens.  It won't work right if you don't. :)

After you've scored the lines, squeeze the tips together to create a good shape.

Do that for both stars and then hot glue them together.  Once that is done, spray paint it any old color you like... I used the Krylon Hammered Finish spray paint because it rocks.  I think it turned out great!

This project is easy and cute... give it a try! And have a great holiday weekend!



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