DIY Money Tree

Hello, hello!
I don't know about you, but when I give a gift of money to someone, I have a really hard time of just putting it in a card! I feel like I always have to come up with some creative presentation lol.
My niece graduated high school this year - woohoooo!! However, because of COVID and the quarantines and limited gatherings, my sister was just recently able to throw her a graduation party. I had seen this idea for a money tree/topiary awhile back and decided to try it myself.
Here's what I ended up with ...

I think it turned out pretty cute! I created a picture tutorial if you'd like to see it, just click HERE
But if you're more into written tutorials, this is how I made it ...
The supplies I used are ... 1 9-inch styrofoam ball, floral pins, floral tape, dowel (I didn't have any, so I used an American Flag yard decoration I had left over from the 4th of July lol), white glue (or you can use Mod Podge), floral foam, a Mason Jar (or any jar/vase/container), party streamers, & curly ribbon

I began by removing the flag from the dowel, wrapped it with floral tape and poked the dowel into the center of the styrofoam ball. Then I removed the dowel and filled the hole with white glue and poked the dowel back in ...

I set that aside to dry and grabbed the dollar bills & floral pins. Pinching the center of the bill, I positioned the floral pin over the center, careful not to poke the bill ...

I then began attaching the floral pins into the styrofoam ball ...

I ended up with some blank spaces that I didn't like. I used some $10 and $5 bills, but if you have more $1 bills, it might fill it ...

I decide to use punches and cardstock to make flowers ...

And I also used my Cricut die cutting machine to cut out leaves ...

Using the floral pins, I attached the flowers and leaves to the spaces ...

Once that was done, I cut 4-5 foot lengths of curly ribbon - I think about 6 of each color ...

 I gathered them together and tied them around the rim of the mason jar. Then using one edge of my scissors, I curled each strand ...

I forgot to take pictures of decorating the mason jar, but all I did was rip strips of a roll of purple party streamer and covered the jar using diluted white glue. I ended up making 3 layers to cover it all.
Once it was completely dry, I stuffed the jar with floral foam, and poked the end of the dowel into the center. I took a sheet of green tissue paper and stuffed it into the jar with the corners poking out ...

All finished ...

I was so happy that my niece was so thrilled to receive it!

I don't know why, but I always worry that my craft projects are dumb or ugly or the recipient thinks it's lame. So I'm really ecstatic when they love it!
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thanks for stopping by!
xoxo
Dawn