DollarTree Bunny Topiaries in Dollarama Pots/ High End for Cheap Collab

Hello my crafty tribe, this is Artsy Maddie and let's make some spring topiaries. So today's um collab is called High End for Cheap and I've been inspired by all of these lovely green topiaries that I'm seeing everywhere and lots of green for spring. So I actually want to make some in the shape of rabbits, so little bunny topiaries. So I'm using these little plastic forms from the Dollar Tree and they come in um a set, like the two halves that fit together. So I'm just showing you here with the one half tracing out the ears and then I just wanted it to have fuller more exaggerated long bunny ears. So just playing around with that shape and if you can see here I'm going to use the one side of the plastic form and then just the foam on the other side. So this is actually a garden kneeling pad, this is from Dollar Tree as well. It's about three quarters of an inch thick and it's just um like a yoga mat type foam, like fairly rigid um but still that soft foam to the touch. So it's really easy to work with, I just keep sharpening my blade with a sharpening stone that is also from Dollar Tree. So this is just a plain old utility knife but if you keep the blade nice and sharp then you'll get nice clean cuts on your foam. So once you have a shape that you're fairly happy with you just get it roughed out here just using the utility knife and then I'm just going to try fitting them onto the ears. So it is a little bit flexible, it has some give to it because it is foam and this whole project is going to actually be really forgiving because we're covering it all in moss at the end anyway so it's really fun, you don't have to stress too much, everything will be that little bit forgiving because it will be covered in foam in the end. So once I had a shape that I was pretty happy with and that fit fairly well onto these ears here then I just kind of played around a little bit with building out the face a little bit as well to give it more of a pronounced nose shape. So I used about four layers of tinfoil and just kept pushing it onto the front of the face just to get more of like a pointy type rabbit shaped face if that makes sense. So just definitely a little more interest than just the plain flat little plastic face that he has now. So then back to these ears, once I had a shape that I was happy with I'm just going to bevel the edges. So I'm going about halfway down the foam and just beveling the edge and then I'll flip them over and do the same and it's going about halfway down as well so they kind of meet up and make like meet up in the middle of the foam if that makes sense. So just beveling halfway on one side and then halfway on the other side to meet in the middle. And then it's really easy to make the second pair you can just use the first pair as your template and then just trace those out and it goes much quicker and easier for the second pair. So you'll just get to see me again here it's a little hard to explain this beveling but you're just putting your blade at an angle and of course being careful of your fingers just work away from your fingers if you can and then just cutting on that slight angle like I would say it's about a 30 degree angle. So again just dry fit them onto the bunny make sure everything's going to fit in there and then once you're happy with it I'm just going to hot glue everything together. So I just hot glued the two plastic halves together just to make it more secure and stable and then once I got that all fitted together now we're going to use some more hot glue to get these ears put onto the bunny. So again just dry fitting making sure everything's okay and then you're going to want to hold them down as the glue is drying just to make sure everything's nice and tight and holding on as it dries that nothing pulls free. So this glue on the outside is going to help hold the seams together as well because the glue is actually going right over top of the seam of the plastic bunny as well so just helping to make the whole thing more secure and then I'm going to move on to make it some little legs some little feet and some little legs. So I'm just using the one and a half inch styrofoam balls from Dollar Tree as well and then I'm just going to cut them in half so I've sharpened the blade again to get a nice clean cut and cut them in half and then in order for them to fit snugly onto the curvature of the plastic rabbit I just kind of went in and beveled the inside a little bit so just went in with my knife and just kind of roughed out a little bit of the center of the foam just so that they'll sit flush with the roundness of the rabbit and then just putting a bunch of hot glue on there and then getting them tacked on to the front of the bunny so just underneath the little arms that it has. So these bunnies are going to be kind of funny they're very short and very plump but I think they're really cute it turned out pretty cute hopefully you guys agree. So then of course because it's a cute little bunny it needs a cute little bunny tail so again just taking half of one of those styrofoam balls and then just getting that tacked down to the back of the rabbit so then back to these noses so just building up the face a little bit so again like I said I used about four layers of tinfoil and then you're just pushing it and pressing it onto the face and then just trying to get that nice not too pointy but just kind of a rounded point for a nose like for the front of the face and the tinfoil is really easy to work with like if you have lumps and bumps you can usually just use your thumbs and push those lumps right down flat and then if you need to you can even cut around the edges if you have too much or too much foil in one area you can kind of cut a little bit off as well if that helps it's really malleable and really easy to work with don't let it intimidate you and then once I was happy with the shapes I just used hot glue again just to get them all tacked down to the face and secured in place and then they just have much more visual interest than just the round flat plastic form that was there so now just to kind of help with more securing in place and also just to help smooth those transitions of the foil to the plastic I just went in with some masking tape and just wrapped around the figure um kind of in lieu of doing like a paper mache over the whole thing which I didn't really feel was necessary because of the moss because it's going to be such a forgiving project so I just used masking tape this would have been perfect although this is Dollar Tree masking tape and it's definitely not good quality it barely has enough stick to it but I did make do it did work out fine once I went over everything with paint then it's really secured and everything is fine however I don't suggest the masking tape from the Dollar Tree I can't recommend it it's awful and I won't buy it again I think I'll just buy a nice big pack from Costco or something or Staples maybe next time I'm there so just showing you just kind of wrapping in like a an x formation like over the top of the nose and then to the back of the head and then from under the nose up to the top of the head on the back if that makes sense like always kind of forming x's almost and it just pulls everything tight and just again just making that transition from the foil to the plastic a little bit smoother and then on the ears as well just the the the transfer from the foam to the plastic as well there so today is so exciting it's a collab the high end for cheap collab and I was invited by my original YouTube buddies um Janie and Diane from Deco Easy and Kiki of Kiki's DIY to join in this wonderful collab there's seven of us all together so excited I love all of these girls they're all so talented so be sure to check out the playlist I will have a link in my description box as well I'll try and throw a link into the comments too so um be sure to check them all out I know everyone's gonna have such great inspiration for you and some of these high-end projects for a budget-friendly price so I think I was able to make these bunnies actually for under $15 maybe not including the paint but hopefully you guys have some sort of green paint it's fairly flexible what type of green you use so I just happen to have some of this green latex paint on hand I added some baking soda to thicken it up and um just make it more um like get better coverage with it and it'll kind of give a little bit of a rough texture for the moss to grip onto so I would suggest that if you have some baking soda maybe throw some into your paint for this project it might help a bit so then after looking at him I just decided that I would make a little bit of a leg to connect that foot so I thought the foot kind of looked a little funny just like it was just floating there so I don't know why maybe got a little bit carried away here but um it was really simple I just kind of folded the the foil into about four layers again and just kind of made a little makeshift shape of a leg that just connects to that little ball foot so there is the first part of the leg and then I just did a couple more layers on top of that and I just kind of rounded out the top with my thumbs just to fit right over that little ball of the foot so just to kind of make it look like he's just actually sitting on his legs and his feet and then just start painting so this paint was really nice and thick it was already kind of a thick latex and then once I added the baking soda it was good to go I got this all done in one good coat. You can always look for mist tint paints as well I love having mist tint paint on hand and kind of you know colors like this that come in handy um a great place to find them is Home Depot, Lowe's or even the Habitat for Humanity store the ReStore they always seem to have mist tints and they're a pretty good price so be sure to have a look there if you ever go buy one. So now this is hopefully something you won't have to do but I was worried that I wouldn't have enough moss I was only able to find two bags for this and I was kind of concerned that it wouldn't be enough so to make it go further I'm making some of my own moss to add to what I have just to kind of make it go further and be able to do all the projects that I'm hoping to do however I've noticed that Dollar Tree has restocked their moss and it shouldn't be hard to find now now that we're further into the spring here so hopefully you guys won't need to do this won't need to make your own moss but if you ever do you just use some of that dry floral foam and a fine grater so at first I had started with like the medium grate and it was just too much I was making like long little strips so don't do that use the finer the finer grate makes a much better moss this is kind of a technique that I think a lot of the model train makers use to make their little trees and shrubbery and stuff like that so then I just mixed in some paint and some water and now we have some makeshift moss so here I'll show you so I've already added in the one bag and mixed it all together and now I'm just adding in the second bag so I thought just to make it a little bit finer and not have such big chunks I just cut the moss as I was adding it so just made sure there was no like super long pieces or super big chunks and then just mixed it all together really well on this tray and then the fun part we get to add it to the little bunnies so I am just using white pva glue just regular old school school glue works great gets everything all you know the moss settles really nicely into that glue and dries really well so it turned out great you just want to be really generous with the glue because it does really absorb into that moss so just get it all spread out to make sure you're not missing any areas or little parts of your form and it's really forgiving to having the green paint underneath it like I definitely don't think you'd want to leave it purple I feel like you would see tiny little bits of purple through it so definitely a worthwhile step to paint the green first so you can see too you don't have to be too worried about what green you used because this green was quite different from the color of the moss but it ended up blending in well so then for the pots I found these two lovely cement planters at dollarama and they kind of have that birch texture to them without a lot of paint detail they just had a little bit of dark gray brushed over the high parts so I thought I would just go in and add some more paint detail so just with a fine black paintbrush I'm just adding some black into the little grooves the little lines of the birch tree and then I just went into all those little crevices and added some watered down acrylic black paint and then just kind of wiped off on top a little bit just to kind of get a gradient of the black and the gray I think I was just using a wet wipe actually a baby wipe and that seemed to work good so it is cement it absorbs the paint quite quickly so just a heads up about that so that you'd have to be painting and then wiping right away because it would absorb into that cement really quickly if this is what you end up working with you wouldn't have the same problems with plastic or metal or anything like that but just with cement so then just as a finishing touch I just went over and dry brushed some white just over top of the whole thing just going in the direction of the bark this is just a chippy brush just an old worn out chippy brush they're always great for dry brushing with so then to be able to secure the branches down into the foam I'm using this super stiff green floral foam and it's a dry foam as well but just really hard like really really firm I think it would work fine too just with the regular dry foam but just make sure you have lots in your planter to help support them so I just went in and filled up the whole space there with some green floral foam and then these are just some branches from doing some pruning in my yard I just trimmed down all the branches and tried to get them all level on the top so just sticking them all in at different angles but then just making sure that they're all creating a level base for the little bunnies to sit on so you'll just want to dry fit them before you end up gluing just to make sure that everything's sitting nice and flat and equal and then once you're happy with them I just went in with some hot glue but definitely like I if I were to do this project again I think I would have actually drilled a hole into the rabbit to start with and then maybe run the branch right up through the rabbit but I'm just going to be careful with them and pack them away really carefully but I just am gluing them on with hot glue so they are holding but I will have to be careful with them and then just for the base like to hide all that floral foam I just went in again with some white PVA glue and some more moss and just covered all that up so just nice and generous with the glue just to be sure to hold all that moss in place and that is it for these little bunny topiaries so I hope you guys like them hopefully you've been inspired to try some sort of topiary or moss project as well and I really hope you guys will check out this collaboration I'm very excited I can't wait to see what everyone else has made wonderfully talented ladies I'm sure you'll find maybe a new creator that you haven't seen yet hopefully or or just an old favorite and lots of inspiration so I just want to thank you guys so much for clicking on this video and to all my crafty tribe members thank you so much for always coming back and supporting me it means the world and if you haven't yet subscribed hopefully you'll consider it and if you hit the red bell you'll be notified when I upload a new video I don't have a regular posting schedule yet so that is the best way to find out 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