Creative Candy Ornaments

The majority of my Sunday was spent making these "Creative Candy Ornaments" and it was so fun and really inexpensive, that I thought I would share one of my many "homemade" ideas I have been recently blogging about. This idea was not my own original, but was found after searching many blog posts from other fellow bloggers on inexpensive Christmas gifts. I have a few up my sleeve, but this one will go to my co-workers as a thoughtful expression of Christmas on our "Employee Fun Day"/Christmas Party that Jean and I have volunteered to host this year.

The entire project including the candy, ribbons, bags, toothpicks, and styrofoam balls cost less than $100. If you would like to make these I have posted a make-shift how to tutorial below..

A small styrofoam ball, actually this is the medium of the 2 size smalls they had at Hobby Lobby. A package of 6 was about $4. The spool of thread is used to make a holder for the ornament ribbon shown below. In the original tutorial, they used green wire, but this is a lightweight option that is VERY easy to cover with the candy once you get started and the purpose of it is to just keep the ribbon attached without seeing it... Next, you will see how I criss crossed the thread to tie in the ribbon I wanted to use as a hanger.

Once the ribbon was connected, I tied a knot at the top. This also helps as you begin to add the candy, the ornament gets a little heavier than what you would think so stabilizing it with this anchor really helps. It is the most tedious part of the project, but well worth the extra 5 minutes.
The fun part is adding the candy. I bought tooth picks to anchor the candies and found it easier to cut the tooth picks in half and stabbing them into the end of each one with the pointed end out. This also takes some time but well worth it. Two kinds of candy you can use are the small spice drops that are sugar coated and in the shape of bells. For some reason I was not able to find these anywhere but Walmart and they only had 3 tubs. Each tub only covered 3 styrofoam balls and with 40 ornaments to make that wasn't cutting it, so I chose multi colored jelly beans to pick up the rest of my project. A regular size bag covered 2 1/2 ornaments. At $1 a bag, you can't beat it!
I surrounded the ribbon first, before proceeding to cover the rest. The finished project looks like this. One is shown with spice drops and one is shown with jelly beans. When I finished, I placed each ornament in a clear cellophane bag and tied with a pretty bow.

I hope you enjoy making your homemade projects this year for Christmas!

xoxoox