Catalog Inspired Urn Filler

I love getting all of those catalogs at home, they are like free magazines to me.  They are a great source of inspiration, and I admit, I have made many catalog purchases over the years.  When I spotted a beautiful urn filler in the Grandinroad spring catalog I was smitten.

This was the lovely urn filler that inspired me to come up with something similar for the urns on my front porch for summer.  At $189, as beautiful as it is, for two urns, this was not in my budget, and I really didn’t want tulips.  Spring is so fleeting for us here in Florida, we kind of go from a springy-winter right into summer.I began with one of the urns from my front porch.  Looks like it is going to need a good scrubbing!  See that big chunk of styrofoam?  I used it in galvanized tubs full of fall flowers.  Time to re-use that!  That was a large piece of styrofoam 4″ x 24″ x 72″ which is large enough to use for both of my pots.  I wedged my piece of styrofoam into my urn and then went to making my “cage”.  I tired so many different ways to construct my cage.  I tried grapevine and wire, but neither were working for me.  I finally went with really skinny dowels.  The dowels I used were 1/8″ x 36″.  These were thin enough that they had enough “give” to them for me to pull them together at the top.I covered the styrofoam with moss, tucking it around the dowels.  I just spaced the dowels every four or five inches apart, using eleven of them total.  Once I began to put my geraniums in the pot, I realized my dowels needed to be angled out more.  I pulled them all out and angled them out more.  I did make sure I pushed my dowels down through the styrofoam a good four inches so that they were not likely to break or to to pull loose.  I began filling the center of the pot with geranium bushes.  Here and there I cut a blossom off to add a little more color around the edges.  When all of my bushes were tucked into the pot, I pulled the top of my dowels together and secured them with a piece of paper wrapped stem wire.  

I found these pretty stems on sale at JoAnn’s and knew they would be perfect to deconstruct to give my dowels a more natural look.  

I cut those stems apart and glued little pieces of the tiny blooms randomly to the dowels.  

I wrapped a little bit of moss around the wire where the dowels were connected and then used hot glue to attach a few of the tips of those little flowers to the top to give them the look of flowering vines.  

Time for details!  To soften the look of the edge of the pot I took some of the excess leaves, stuck a piece of thick wire like a pin through the stems and pushed them into the styrofoam around the edges of my urn.  A few pieces of geranium garland were cut and pinned in around the edge of the urn and I was done!  Looks like it will be time to relax on the porch!  Oops, now I need to fill the other urn and make a wreath for the front door to match!