How to Make a Candy Bouquet in a Mug: One Sweet Gift Idea!

Make a candy bouquet in a nice ordinary object like a coffee mug and make a lasting impression for the next gift exchange, co-worker or boss birthday, or a similar occasion in which you’re pressed for time, or $$$ …or a little bit of both!

This is something that could take you all of thirty minutes (or a little more, give or take) once you have all the materials together…but the impression you leave, may last way longer. Candy Bouquets are fun to make, look great, and they make great conversation pieces too, for everyone who sees them….especially kids 🙂

Pin Me, Candy Lover! 🍭

Not all bouquets are made from flowers…some, like this are made from a tasty confection.
Max Life Foam Cylinder 3″ diameter

Materials

Obviously first things first…you’re gonna need a mug (more on that in a sec) but in addition…The rest of the materials needed include:

A brick of floral foam (cylinder shape would work great, like this one on the left, and it’s just the right width for a mug.)
♥Small floral adornments
♥Bamboo skewers
♥Candy of your choosing (duh!)
♥Green or white stem tape
♥Ribbon

You definitely want to use green floral foam and not that white stuff used for packaging, because it’s messy and the pieces just crumble everywhere – ick. I used what’s known as “dry” floral foam, it has a very dense texture and will hold elements nicely. It’s the one in the package of 2 in the picture below.

☕️ Find the Right Mug

Some of us coffee aficionados (me included) collect lots of mugs. All kinds from decorative to funny and lighthearted. Coffee mugs in and of themselves are an evergreen gift and loved by many! I sell coffee mugs in my little store on Etsy so I know all about the niche’s popularity.

Choose a mug with a saying on it that will match the occasion. Or a design on it that unmistakably fits the recipient’s personality and will bring a smile to her face! I am using an 11 oz one with a nice design on it. You may be able to find 16 oz ones too.

—>>No mugs with designs? No problem! This tutorial will show you how to design an awesome mug with marker pens that your recipient will LOVE 😊 .

Creating the Candy Base

Take your brick of floral foam and push it into the coffee mug. Ideally, look for the kind that is cylinder-shaped so you won’t have to spend much time trimming it to fit . Mine is about 3″ in diameter and it fit an 11″ mug just fine.

It’s OK if a little bit of the foam sticks up over the top – I’ll show you how we’re going to hide it later.

As a pro tip, you may want to put a square of cellophane at the bottom of the mug, which will catch any stragglers of foam, if any, and the recipient can just rinse it out later.

🍭 Now Bundling the Candy!

What kind of candy should you use for this? That one’s up to you, it’s best to use small and individually wrapped pieces for best results. I’m using Hershey’s, Reese’s, all miniature pieces, kind of like what you hand out to trick-or-treaters for Halloween.

Anything already prewrapped, has possibility! Gather all your sweet treats and sort them by type. The key is to attach them to branches, so if you’ve got five (insert type) and six (insert type) you want to make each branch with brand x type of candy.

Image credit: Veta5

I like what this gal is doing here in this article I came across – she’s included candy pieces WITHIN paper flowers she has crafted. I thought that was a really cool idea! She’s also using crepe paper too, which is what I used in my paper rose tutorial!

🍭 Attaching the Candy

Bamboo skewers are excellent for attaching your individual candy bars, as they have a sharp point on one end that will easily go into the foam once assembled. To attach each bar  use some Scotch tape. Look behind the foil flap on the back – use it to hide the stick under so it doesn’t show before taping.

You may need to use a little more tape to make sure it is secure.The bars kind of slid around on the sticks, so I made sure to secure the top and bottom.

🍭 Assembling the Candy Bouquet

To assemble the candy bouquet, you may have to think like a florist arranging flowers in a vase. I took a floral design class many moons ago (just for fun, not for a grade) and one of the biggest takeaways is mastering the art of clustering flowers together according to color, type and height.

Tall flowers would go in the middle, or the back, and shorter ones would go around the sides, and medium in the middle. You want to do the same with your candy sticks too. Start in the middle and work your way out until you have placed all of the candy “branches” strategically.

Depending on how big a mug you have chosen, and the type of candy or candies, you may need between 5 and 11 candies.

Look at your tallest candy sticks…insert those in the middle of your mug. Your shortest sticks should go in the front and back of those. You can sorta slant the short ones a little bit too, as you insert them, for a little bit more panache.

And your mid-range length candy sticks? Insert those between the long and the short!

Filling in the Gaps

Before you present that nice coffee cup with the candy arrangement – don’t forget you don’t want that foam oasis to show….you need to add a “filler” to that area. The best way tot do this is with some shredded crinkle paper or something similar to Easter grass, it can be metallic, or a conventional color; it will look nice and really add a great finishing touch, just like you would with gift baskets.

Adding Adornments

Although cutesy little adornments are strictly optional, they can make your candy branches pop a little more! Ribbons or some matching color washi tape are good adornments. Another nice finisher-off is some ribbon around some of the  candy clusters. It will soften the look a little and look really good. Choose colors that also look good alongside the candy and the crinkle filler.

Fan them around the base…You can use satin ribbon or the kind you can curl with scissors.

That’s it….you have just made your first candy bouquet in a coffee mug, a very simple and quaint gift idea, I think you’ll agree! Just don’t be surprised if you see that some of the “branches” or “stems” of the bouquet have been consumed the next time you see it.

Better yet, long after the candy is gone, some lucky recipient will have a nice mug to enjoy for drinking coffee or tea , or keeping that pen collection handy!🍭

Image Attribution: 2nd image courtesy of Prachilele