Recycled Sugar-Plums for The Tree

       This has been too lean a year for any new Christmas decor. But sometimes I find the leanest years to be full of old-fashioned charm and that is the way we like it at our house! No fuss, no muss, just using our imaginations and a few supplies to turn a tiny table-top tree into something only a very hungry five year old would dream up . . .
        The supplies I used to make these small sweets or "sugar-plums" for our family Christmas tree included: recycled, vintage peppermint Styrofoam balls, a paper egg carton, gold foil mini cup-cake liners, gold foil holly petals, wire, hot glue, masking tape, red glitter glue pen and tacky craft glue.

I didn't have the heart to toss these vintage peppermint, foam balls. I kept them in our family
 Christmas craft stash until our daughters decided to craft a candy themed tree this year.

Step-by-Step Instructions: 

1. Remove any old wire from the Styrofoam balls; mine where formerly attached to old picks.
2. Cut shallow cups apart from a egg carton molded from paper pulp. Make sure that the sides of these cups have been cleaned up and are relatively uniform in height all around their edges. 
3. Hot glue each of the peppermint foam balls down inside of the egg cups, keeping the nicer halves facing up.
4. Take the gold foil mini cup-cake liners and smooth a small piece of masking tape onto the inside of the liner at the bottom. This will help the surfaces attach better using the tacky glue. 
5. Squeeze the tacky glue into the mini liner and then smooth and press it around the egg carton cup to cover the bottom and side surfaces.
6. Now bend a wire for hooks and poke as many as you need into the very tops of each recycled sugar-plum so that a wire may be twisted through these to make hangers for each ornament.
7. Hot glue the gold foil holly leaves to each sugar-plum and then apply a tiny bit of red glitter glue to the center of each sugar plum tip. See photos above.

More Peppermint Candy Crafts for The Christmas Tree:

• Craft cross candy canes from chenille stems
• How to make mini cotton batting candy canes 
• Make wool lollipops for the Candy Christmas tree 
• Sew penny peppermints using a blanket stitch or two