Candy Cane Crafts

Ok, so we are a little under a week away until Christmas. Up this week we have a Christmas favourite, the candy cane! We have some fun candy cane crafts for you but first a little history on this yummy sweet treat.

The candy cane first originated in Cologne, Germany when a choirmaster at a cathedral wanted all the children there to be quiet during a Christmas Eve ceremony. He asked a local candy maker to create a treat for these children to help them stay quiet and he came up with the candy cane. Candy canes are typically white with red stripes and have a peppermint flavour but now you’ll see all sorts of flavours and colourings. The first candy canes were made by hand and eventually a Chicago based company patented the candy cane shape in the early 1920’s and machines started making them.

We’re not making candy canes this week in a cooking sense; we are making them in a craft sense.

Check out the two fun and easy Christmas candy cane crafts that we tried out...

Twine Wrapped Candy Canes

These are super easy.

All you need is a candy cane or two (depends on how many of these decorations you want to make) some twine, hot glue, and ribbon.

Start by gluing the bottom of the candy cane and start wrapping with twine. Periodically put some glue on the candy cane as you wrap it. Eventually you’ll have a fully twine wrapped candy cane.

Add a twine or ribbon bow to the top along with a twine hoop for hanging.

Paper Candy Canes

This is another fun and simple craft.

For this one you’ll need markers, paper, a ruler, scissors, and tape.

First thing you’ll need to do is cut the paper into a square.

Then draw lines around two edges in varying widths and colours. Most we did were four to five lines or you can do three to six. We used a ruler as we wanted straighter lines.

Next turn the paper over and starting on the corner with no lines, start to roll the paper.

Once it’s all rolled up, tape the last corner down. You’ll have a candy stick now.

To turn it onto a candy cane, while flattening as you go, curl over one end with your finger or a fatter marker and manipulate it to a hook end.

Trim the end of the curled end.

Hang them up or display them through your house for the holidays!

DIY Ornaments

Once December 1^st hits, then it’s time to put up the Christmas tree. Mine went up this weekend. Usually it’s a work in progress as the first step is putting up the tree and then the next few days and weeks, we add ornaments to it.

We thought that it might be a fun idea to make some ornaments this week. In the past we have painted ceramic and wooden shapes, but this year we thought we’d use the plastic ornaments that you can find at the craft store which open up. We’re going to open them up and fill them to decorate as well as paint them.

Again, this one is a really inexpensive craft to make with items that you can easily get at the dollar store or probably even find at home.

Painting the ornaments takes more time so you’ll want to do this further in advance if you want to give them away or hang them up. We’ve picked a variety of colours for paint to use; some are Christmasy and some are not. We also have a bunch of different sizes of brushes and some sponges as well. You can pre-sketch out some designs or you can free style it and come up with your design as you go. Do whatever you like. Here’s what we came up with...

This is a drip paint ornament. What we've done is pick a couple of matching colours and dripped them into the ornaments and moved the paint around by turning the ornaments. We did this process a few times to get all of the area covered. Then we let them hang upside down overnight to drain out the excess paint and this is what we got...

Another option to is to fill the ornaments with curled ribbons, shredded snow, larger glitter bits, small punched shapes, or coloured paper or paper from old books so that you can see the words.

For both, you can put ribbons/bows on the outside to adorn the finished ornaments.  

Now you can hang them up in your tree or around your house or you can make a bunch and hand them out as gift this year.  

Snowman Decoration

We’re taking inspiration from our “Snowmen Tobogganing” card this week and we are making a homemade snowman decoration to adorn your house this season.

You just need some basic supplies, some of which you may already have in your house and if you don’t, they can be very inexpensive to pick up. We went to the dollar store and found a few things that we needed.

You’ll need two-three Styrofoam balls (one bigger than the other if you’re using two or three different sized ones if you’re using more), white glue and something to apply it with, thick decorative ribbon for a scarf, a bread knife, assorted buttons, toothpicks, shredded snow, a glue gun, felt for a hat, and some popsicle sticks.   

Prep your work space because this could be a messy craft. We laid out some newspaper over our table and then we also got out a paper plate and placed all of our snow on that.

Our snowman is going to be a two baller so first of all, cut what’s to be the bottom of the smaller (head) ball and then the top of the (body) so that they can lay flat when connected together.

Now apply the white glue to both balls and roll in the shredded snow. Let it dry and allow the glue to harden.

Next use the glue gun to glue the top and bottom together.

Glue gun on buttons down the center and buttons for the eyes and mouth.

For the nose we have taken some orange cardstock and cut it into a triangle and glued it on.

Glue a cut in half popsicle stick on both sides as the arms.

Now it’s time for the hat. We’re using some felt pieces that we had left over from a Christmas blog craft that we have done in the past. Take a piece of felt, we chose green. Make it into a cylinder and glue the edges together; make sure it fits your snowman’s head. Gather about half of it as the top “pom” and secure it with an elastic band. Cut slits in the top half to make it look like tassels. Now cover the elastic band with string, pipe cleaner, or ribbon. Now you have a little hat. You can just rest it on top or if you'd like, put a little dab of glue on it to keep it in place.

Lastly, use a wider patterned/decorative piece of ribbon and tie/glue it around the neck of your snowman as a scarf.  

Here’s our finished snowman...