Topiary or tree of happiness, according to popular belief, brings prosperity and prosperity to the house. Kanzashi is Japan's oldest art in creating jewelry from silk. The kanzashi topiary looks gorgeous and can decorate any corner of your home. Of course, when you look at these beautiful flowers, it seems that their production will be extremely difficult, but this is not entirely true. So, where does the creation of your own tree of happiness begin?
What is required?
Making a tree is very painstaking and requires a lot of patience and accuracy. To create flowers, you will need satin ribbons or organza, silk, satin crepe. Since the fabric used in this technique is prone to crumble, the edges will need to be melted, for this it will be necessary to stock up on a lighter, a candle with a soldering iron or a wood burner. Among other things, you will also need: a ruler, tweezers, fabric glue, scissors, sewing needles, pins, multi-colored threads, decorative elements (beads, rhinestones, sequins and other decor).
For crown topiary, you can use newspapers crumpled into a lump and tied with thread, or a form of polystyrene foam cut out by yourself or bought in a needlework store. For the trunk of our tree, you can use dry tree branches, sushi sticks, thick wire or other suitable improvised material. Many needlewomen use flower pots as a vase. For very small trees, an excellent vase will be a cup, a glass or an old vase that you don’t need. To fix the topiary inside the vase, it is necessary to add alabaster or gypsum divorced according to the instructions.
How to make?
First you need to decide what kind of flowers you want to make, it can be roses, asters or other flowers that you like best. In the kanzashi technique, you can imitate almost any flower. Let's look at some of the workshops on creating flowers from satin ribbons.
- Roses. To make this flower, we need a satin ribbon about 35 cm long. Take it with its face to us and bend the corner outward, from the bent corner we begin the ribbon twisting to form the center of our rose. However, do not forget to hold the next bend. So, bending the ribbon, we turn the whole flower. Do not forget that the lower part of the flower must be fixed, otherwise it will fall apart. As soon as our tape comes to an end, we need to flash it for strengthening. As you can see, there is nothing complicated about this.
With proper dexterity, flowers in this style can be made not only from plain ribbons, but also from two or three colors.
- Astra is two-tone. To create a flower, we cut satin ribbons into strips of 2.5x6 cm. We need white stripes in the amount of 20 pieces and blue stripes in the amount of 22 pieces. We turn the strip horizontally, clamping it with tweezers, and cut a small triangle obliquely. We fix the tip by melting it. Similarly to this petal we do the rest. We turn the lower part of the petal on both sides, fix and melt. We do this on all the petals. Lubricate the base, a circle of felt, with glue, we also smear each petal at the bottom and stick them in a circle on the base. The next row of petals of our aster is doing exactly the same, but with a slight shift to the middle and a different color. In the same way, the third and fourth rows are made. After gluing the fourth row in the center of the flower, glue a bead or rhinestones.
We make the topiary. Wrap the flower trunk with tape, decorative paper or braid. Glue the base ball to the stem of the future flower and begin to attach the flowers to the base as tightly as possible to each other. We take the container for the vase and fill it with diluted alabaster or gypsum, wait for the material to begin to set. We insert a tree into the mixture. We are waiting for complete solidification and decorate it with an imitation of grass.
Do-it-yourself flowers can be used not only for making topiary, but also for decorating hairpins, hair bands, curtain hooks or decorating other things.
How to decorate?
As we noted above, all kinds of decorative elements can be used to decorate the topiary: beads, sequins, beautiful buttons or specially acquired decorative insects, such as a butterfly, ladybug or snail. Often, coffee beans are used for decoration. In the same way, you can decorate the topiary with sweets.
Beautiful examples
Asters can also be made such - luxurious needle-shaped flowers.
Another beautiful example of a topiary with roses.
An example of a sunflower tree that even a beginner needlewoman can make.
You can make a tree of happiness yourself, with minimal financial costs, as a decor for your own home or as a gift to relatives or friends.
To learn how to make Astra topiary using the Kazan technique, see the video below.
