How To Make A Cheap Painted Easter Egg Topiary

How do you make a cheap-painted Easter egg topiary?  Begin with cheap plastic Easter eggs.  You may already have an abundance of these!  If not, you can find these at the dollar store, the craft store, and at some grocery stores and they are cheap.

Remember the rag wreath I made a couple of weeks ago?  Envisioning a mantel display, the idea for these topiaries is born.  The wonderful thing about making your own is that you can coordinate the paint colors with your other decorative objects.  That is exactly what I have done.

Remember when choosing your colors, you want to keep the depth of color the same.  In other words, the same intensity of hue, the amount of white added.  Don’t use brilliant pure hues with pastels.  Use all pastels or all bright hues to create a cohesive look.

Supplies Needed For This Easter Egg Topiary Project

• 2 Metal or Ceramic Urns
• 2 Grapevine Topiary Cones  (I found these at Hobby Lobby)
• 15-foot Grapevine garland (from Joann’s)
• Plastic Easter eggs
• Spring flower stems
• Glue gun
• Wicker White FolkArt Multi-Surface Acrylic Paint
• Acrylic Craft Paint in your choice of colors
• Flat paintbrush
•       Plastic paint palette with wells

 

Topiary Instructions

Paint The Easter Eggs

Notice that I used two different sizes of plastic eggs.  You can use all the same sizes but using different sizes makes it more interesting visually.

First, you need to basecoat the plastic Easter eggs with the multi-surface Wicker white acrylic paint.  This paint adheres to the plastic better than regular craft paint, making a nice base coat.  Paint 1/2 of the egg, and place the painted egg on top of a small upside-down lid or in a little paint tray well.  (A 2-liter cola lid or similar lid will work just fine.)

Paint one-half of an egg and set the unpainted half into one of the wells.  Begin painting another.  When most of the wells are filled with painted eggs, the first one is pretty dry.  Go back and paint the second half of the first one and repeat with the remaining eggs.

 

Then, paint over the top of the base coat with your chosen acrylic paints.  The eggs may take two coats of acrylic paint.  Just paint the eggs the same way you painted on the basecoat.

I love the soft matte look of the painted eggs.  This takes a little bit of time to do but actually goes faster than you might think.  Painting like this is one of those activities you can do mindlessly and it has to be therapeutic!  Lol!

Adding Brown Spatter

Using some brown acrylic paint, I used burnt umber, dip an old toothbrush, and use my finger to bend the bristles back and let them fly, spattering paint onto the painted eggs.

Wanting to keep my fingernails clean, I used a credit card to brush across the bristles.  Well, that did not work so well.  Use your finger and wash your hands quickly.  A little bit of hand sanitizer takes the little bit remaining around your nails.  

Spatter is such a simple thing, but doesn’t it make a huge difference?

 

Preparing The Grapevine Garland

Wires hold the garland together in a disc shape.  Once you remove the wires, the grapevine garland looks like this.  While this is the shape of the topiary cone, it needs to be a little thinner.  I plan to divide the entire length in half.  Then, wrap the lengths around the topiary to reshape it slightly.

Barely visible, there are brown wires holding the garland together.  I’ve removed as many of these as I could see!  They are nearly invisible!  Before soaking the garland, try to remove as many as possible.

Soaking the entire garland in a bucket of water overnight will make the grapevine more malleable.  Use very hot water to pour over the grapevine.    Be sure the entire garland is submerged.  You can use a heavy rock or brick to weigh it down.  There are a lot of those brown wires.  They will come in handy when adding the grapevine to the topiaries.

Remove the garland from the water to a towel to help absorb the excess water.  Then, carefully pull the garland apart to create two separate spiral garlands.  I didn’t get through the entire length of it.  It’s a little bit crazy unwinding this!  Lol!  

I just pulled apart enough to spiral around one of the cones.

Adding The Grapevine To The Grapevine Topiary Cone

 

Using the brown wire you remove from the garland, secure some of the pieces of garland in a spiral around the topiary cone.  I felt the entire width of the garland is too much.  Using about half of it looks better to me.  

Once the garland is wrapped around the cone shape, cut the ends with cutters and secure them with one of the brown wires.

Expect a mess on your counter.  Little pieces of stuff kept falling off the grapevine.  No big deal.

You can see that the topiary on the left has a grapevine spiral.  The grapevine on the right includes some extra pieces of the grapevine added in the opposite direction.  Weave the ends into the spiraled grapevine or into the grapevine of the topiary.  It’s amazing how easily the grapevine pieces can be woven, bent, and tucked securely.  I like the extra interest these pieces add and it helps cradle some of the painted plastic Easter eggs.  At this point, I just set these eggs on the vines to get an idea of how it’s going to look.

Place the eggs around the tree, balancing the size and colors visually.  It’s probably a good idea to glue or wire the floral stems in place before placing the eggs.  I was clearly designing this as I went!

 

Flower Stems

These flower buds and blossoms have just a touch of pink on the petals.  That is deliberate.  Remember that pink is an accent color on the rag wreath? 

The flower stems need to be cut into single stems.  Then, bend the stems to curve around the cone.  You can weave and tuck the stems to secure them or use the leftover brown wire.  Since there’s no visual interest in them, tuck the end of the bare stems into the woven grapevine of the cone.

Add another stem, continuing the spiral around the cone shape.  The flowers are just an added element of interest and should be subtle, not the main focus.  You don’t want them to fight for attention.  The Easter eggs are the stars here.

 

Add Some Greenery

 

Next, add some greenery.  I like the wispy look of this greenery I found at Micheal’s.  It reminds me of spring.

 

It is easy to remove the branches on this greenery.  Just pull the branch off at the end of the stem.  If your greenery isn’t connected like this, just cut the stems at the end of the branch.

 

Then, tuck the pieces over and alongside the curved pieces of grapevine. 

At this point, I like what I see and then, I fired up the low-melt glue gun.  You can use whatever glue gun you have.

The eggs are so light, they only need a dot of glue on the backside and another just where the spiraled couple of grapevine pieces wrap around them.  Use this sparingly.  You seriously only need a dot of glue to hold the eggs and this wispy greenery.  Don’t overdo it with the glue.  Excess glue always looks sloppy.  If, however, you accidentally pump on too much, just hide it with greenery or a flower bud.

Then, add a dot of glue at the end of each of the greenery stems, another in the middle, and another toward the top ends just to hold each in place.

 

Glue The Eggs

Lastly, glue the eggs using one or two dots of glue.  Ultimately, the topiary has 7 of the larger eggs and 11 of the smaller eggs in the three different paint colors.  Instead of completely covering the cone with the eggs, I used them sparingly.   

I painted 40 eggs altogether for the two topiaries and 4 are leftover.  Lol!  My fear was that it wouldn’t be enough and here I have a few leftovers!

The Easter Egg Topiary

 

Here you can see the before and after.   The Easter eggs are so cheap and don’t they make really pretty spotted eggs?  The flower stems are leftovers from another project.  The greenery was half off at Michael’s and I already had the urns.  I did have to buy the grapevine but I used a 40% off coupon.  So, you see it is a pretty cheap project but I love it!  (I’ve finished the second one now, too.  You’ll have to come back to see the completed mantle!)

 

Need more Easter ideas? ◄ Click here!

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