Coffee Topiary

Instructions

1. First of all gather all your material. Make sure the Styrofoam ball and the flowerpot are equally sized. I choose these colors cause they match, but you can choose any colors you want

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2. Start by painting the Styrofoam balls brown and this is where the toothpicks would come in handy cause you can either wait for one half to dry and then do the other half. Or once you paint one half you can poke the painted side with a toothpick in order to be able to pain the other half without making a mess, and then let it dry like in the picture

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3. While the balls are drying you can start preparing the flowerpots, grab your foam block and press a flowerpot against it in order to mark the diameter of the pot, then with your knife start cutting, you want to achieve a tight fit in the pot, and also you want to fill it almost to the top (i forgot to take a picture of that, and it doesn´t matter if you use multiple pieces of foam, just make sure that it is really tight)

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4. Now the sticks, I used 3 per tree, also mine were really long sticks and i didn't want my trees to be too tall, so i cut them 23cm (11.5 in) long (it doesn't matter if the tips look kind of messy cause no one will ever see that again), then with the hot glue gun i put a dab of hot glue at the top and bottom of the sticks and piled them up as to make a triangle. When they were nice and firm i wrapped my decorative thread around them securing it wit a dab of hot glue.

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5. Now the pen comes in handy, where you poked the ball with the tooth pick you can poke a hole with the pen in order to put the sticks in the ball, once you have the hole you need to dab a lot of hot glue on the sticks (like in the picture) and you want to stick it in the ball and push it in for like 2 cm (half an inch)

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6. Now the tricky part.... start gluing the coffee beans onto the balls, start from the top of the ball and work your way around and down, paste the beans flat side up and flat side down, alternating frequently, try not to leave too many empty spaces. I used white glue because it doesn't dull the smell of the coffee. This step can be really frustrating, but with some work and practice it'll be really easy. Once the beans are in place, and dry you can randomly glue the beads if you want to.

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7. And then to put it in the flower pot, just like in step 5 you need to put a lot of hot glue on the sticks and just push it in the foam until the bottom, and then fill the hole up with hot glue. Now put some hot glue on the foam's surface and start gluing your shredded paper and arrange in a way that you like, put some more hot glue in different places until it is all secure.

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