Valentine’s candy heart topiaries

They’re weirdly chalky and sweet tart wannabees but you have to admit that candy hearts are adorable. I’d seen pictures of some tree topiaries done on white cones but they just didn’t have the pop of contrast I wanted. a couple of shades of moss later I landed on this dark green sheet moss and liked it so much I went ahead and did a small ball one as well. They’re quick and easy and while I haven’t sealed them yet I’m considering sealing them to see if they’ll last from year to year.

Our dollar tree sells white styrofoam cones but you can also find them at Michaels or on Amazon. Our craft stores have very odd moss selections so I went ahead and amazoned this one and I liked how flat it was to put on as a base.

I started by rolling the cone on one of the moss mats to see the best way to line it up and found this diagonal angle to work the best.

I started by hot gluing one edge all the way down. This is one of those projects where you want large globs of hot glue and have to press the moss on until the glue cools.

I kept rolling and overlapped the edges before gluing the other edge down.

After the sides were well glued I cut off the excess at the bottom but kept the moss on top. I wanted a pointy top so I kept the natural point that it made and scrunched the moss together and squirted hot glue in through the top to stabilize the point.

After that I just hot glued on candy hearts I found at the dollar store (these were the slightly larger ones in the bag) putting colors on randomly.

Once the hearts were on I wanted a little bit of accent moss in between them. You can peel small pieces of flat moss off the cuttings from the bottom. i put a small dot of hot glue between the dots and pressed a small piece of moss in between. When I got some crumbled moss I would sprinkle it onto the glue and that worked too.

I’m super stoked with how it turned out, and put it on a milk glass cup vasey thingy that worked well with its scale.

I liked it so much I wanted to make a little topiary ball to go along with it.

This guy is actually based on a plastic ornament! I happened to have a green one but you could use one of any color and paint it. I like the green base because it doesn’t show through extra color even if there’s a small break in the moss.

I started at what would be the top of an ornament but is the bottom of the topiary, gluing hearts around the hole but leaving the hole open to be able to insert a stick later. After the hearts are on it’s the same technique to put moss in between. I found a stick in the yard that fit in the hole and tied on a ribbon with some ribbon curls then stuck it in a small silver trophy vase thingy. I kept it upright by shoving a plastic bag in there and then put some loose moss on top.

The Valentine’s day sign was my Grandma’s, and I laminated it to keep it safe. A felt heart garland from the Target dollar section, some pink and gold accents and voila! Valentine’s decor even the four year old approved of!