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Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Craft Five Christmas Candy Cones Using Wooden Accents

      These little Christmas candy cones are made with recycled cardboard, decorative papers and a collection of holiday wooden cut-outs. My assortment of five ornaments includes: a candy cane, bell, fir tree, Santa and a star. 
      I turned these traditional shapes into classic candy cone ornaments that are sure to please any lover of jelly beans, lemon drops, peppermints, gummies and gumdrops for Christmas!
A candy cane, candy cone trimmed with striped green and red  paper.
      On occasion, I am given odds and ends by people wanting to clean out old craft supplies from their kitchen drawers, closets or the occasional shoe box from beneath their guest bed. 
      Among supplies such as these I often find wooden cut-outs that under usual circumstances are considered "juvenile" craft supply. These simple, plain shapes without decoration that some small child traced around or looked at with boredom, no doubt, are then tossed aside into the heap of unused parts belonging to that Christmas hodgepodge that collects in "the drawer" of discards in every average American home.
      So what happens to this odd sundry of supply once it reaches the Grimm household you may ask with just a hint of boredom in your voice followed by a yawn and a stretch? What do you think, smarty pants; it gets glued into the next thing of course!

Supply List:
  • cardboard (recycled)
  • scissors
  • white school glue and tacky glue
  • Christmas trims, odds and ends
  • ribbon
  • decorative papers
  • wooden Christmas cut-outs
  • A variety of acrylic paints; all colors but mostly: red, green, ivory, white, skin tone, whatever matches the colors found in your decorative papers.
  • The paper pattern included below, printed out and cut for tracing around
  • stapler
  • masking tape
  • clear acrylic varnish to finish the wooden shapes
Step-by-Step Instructions:
  1. Download and print out a candy cone pattern from the internet. 
  2. Trace and cut this shape from discarded cardboard. I used a tossed cereal box for these ornaments.
  3. Shape the cardboard into a cone. Add a bit of glue to the edge you roll inside of the cone. I stapled the top of my cone and then used a bit of masking tape to hold the cones together as these dried.
  4. Now wrap the outside of these cones in decorative papers. I used the same template as before adding an additional 1/4 inch to the outside of the pattern so that I could fold and tuck the edges of my paper neatly. I also lined the inside of the cones with that same paper. Use white school glue sparingly for this step.
  5. Poke a small hole on opposite sides in order to string a ribbon through the ornaments. Knot each end to create a hanger for each candy cone.
  6. I pasted the backside of each of my flat wooden shapes with the same decorative papers I used in covering the cone shapes.
  7. Cut around the edges of the wooden shapes tucking and gluing the paper down securely as you go.
  8. Now paint the front side of each shape with colorful acrylic paints. You may use my photographs as a guide if you wish to make candy cones that look exactly like mine. Or, if your feeling more adventurous, paint your own designs.
  9. I also glued on to the shapes a few additional elements like ribbon and silk flowers with a bit of tacky glue.
  10. Now glue your finished wooden shapes onto the cones and let these dry face down over night. I used more tacky glue for this process.
  11. On the following day brush a layer of clear varnish onto the wooden surfaces and hang the candy cones up until these have dried.
A bell candy cone trimmed with a bright red poinsettia.
A Christmas tree candy cone topped with a star.
A contemplative Santa candy cone; he wears a tired expression.
A festive polka-dotted star candy cone.

2 comments:

  1. I've always wondered what to use these wooden cut outs for. I think these are called flats, Kath.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, I believe that is what these are referred to as "flats." They rarely come with drawings to show people how to paint them though.

    ReplyDelete

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