Hanging Candy Ornament Ball

by Janelle
(AZ)

This hanging candy ball is an edible ornament. They make a special hand-crafted gift, or a party decoration. All it takes is a few simple materials, and you may have a lot of them around already.

Because you'd be working with unwrapped candies (unless you want to use wrapped), you should wear latex examination gloves. You can get a box of them at drug stores or hair supply stores. The candies are mounted on toothpicks, so then when people take them off to eat them, they are using the toothpick.

This happens to be a Valentine decoration because of the time of year, but you can change the kind and color of candy for a different holiday.

Also, I know a lot of elderly people are on low sugar diets, so you might want to make these out of sugar free candies, or at include some.

Materials you will need:

Large styrofoam ball
Bag of candy. I used jelly valentine candy
Box of colored toothpicks
About 10 straight pins
Scissors
About 12 small artificial flowers
Larger artificial flower to hang at the bottom
A length of florist wire, about 18 inches
A small bead, about the size of a small gumdrop
Needle nose pliers
White thread, and a needle
Narrow curling ribbon
Wider ribbon for top, or a bow

First take the wire and with the pliers, bend a small hoop on one end, then string the small bead onto it. The hoop you just made will keep it from pulling off. This will be the bottom of the wire, at the bottom of the styrofoam ball. You need the bead at the bottom of the ball, because it keeps the wire from pulling through the styro when the project is finished, since it will be a little heavy.

Next, poke the wire through the middle of the ball. Form a wire circle at the top end, about the size of a nickel. Twist the end of the hook around the rest of the wire so it will stay in place. You can cut the length of wire shorter first if you find that it is too long. The wire should cut easily with a scissors. You will tie your ribbons around this wire circle at the end, and use it to hang the ball also.

Now take your toothpicks and attach the candies, closely together, all over the ball to cover it. Let a little end of the toothpick stick out of the center of each candy. There will be some small gaps between the candies. To fill the gaps, I took a straight pin and stuck it through a small flower, then pushed it into the styro ball. I hung a larger flower from the wire hook on the bottom of the ball.

Then you just put ribbon through the wire circle on top, whatever kind of bow you would like. You can also use a finished, store-bought bow instead.

Finally, tie a thread or another ribbon through the hook on the top, and hang it up! If you don't want to hang it, you can put it on a stand in the middle of a centerpiece.