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 🙂
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
Thin and thick gauge wires (more about wire gauge here)
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.
☕️ 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 something with a design on it that unmistakably fits the recipient’s personality and will bring a smile to her face! Most standard sized coffee mugs hold 11 oz but there are some that are bigger; you might get to create a little more flamboyant display with a bigger cup!
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 .
Floral foam is nice and dense and has staying power for all your candy sticks🍭 .These are some excellent floral products below from CreateForLess.
FloraCraft Floral Foam Blocks 6 pc
Floral Stem White Wire 26 gaugeWhite Floral Stem Tape 60 ft
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? Lollipops for the obvious reason with their long sticks are going to work the best, but you can always combine other types too to make your display as full as possible. You can even use candy bars turned sideways.
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.
🍭 Trimming and Wiring the Candy
Bamboo skewers
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!
You may need to wrap it around twice to make sure it is secure. If you’ve got some needle nosed pliers these will make that part easier. I like to curl the wire ends under with my pliers, since they tend to be rather sharp.
🍭 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 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.
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.
Adding Adornments
Although cutesy little adornments are strictly optional, they can make your candy branches pop a little more! If you’ve got some that are attached to wire, or can be easily attached, wrap them at the base of the candy parts and secure. Use the stem tape to secure them well.
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 and 3rd images courtesy of Prachilele
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