Tuesday, December 18, 2012

fun with sparkly pipe cleaners!

The other day after work I took a peek into the dollar store to see what fun holiday themed goodies I could find. I ended up being drawn to a very sparkly bag of xmas pipe cleaners and (of course) picked it up! Who could pass up a big ol' bag of red, green, silver, and gold goodness just waiting to be crafted with! So I brought the sparkly joy back home and decided that these particular pipe cleaners were destine to become xmas candy canes! Yay!

This craft probably qualifies as kid friendly since it is incredibly easy, minor motor skills are required, and all you need is pipe cleaners and snips. It also lands in the "my favourite kind of craft" project because it takes all of one minute to complete. Ready? Let's go:

Step 1: Pick out a nice combination of candy cane pipe cleaners and line them up


Step 2: Twist away!


Step 3: Grab the kitchen scissors and snip your twisted sparkly stick into smaller pieces. I decided to go with three canes per cleaner, but you could easily make them as big or small as you'd like


Step 4: Bend the top of your piece into a festive candy cane shape and you're set!


Step 5 (optional): Go crazy and make yourself an army of canes!!!


Now wasn't that fun? What do you with your masses of festive candy canes you ask? Well those options are endless!  I decided to hang some of the candy canes on my little tree as tinsel and they really add some extra sparkle when the twinkle lights are on. I taped some to some holiday parcels as a little gift topper and ended up decorating a stocking with them too! Finally I sent the remaining canes along with a few xmas cards to some pals who will hopefully have their own imaginative new homes.  If I had a cat I would have happily taken pictures of nameless cat (probably) going wild over how fun they are to play with! Hooray!  What do you think? Any pipe cleaner candy cane uses I haven't thought of? 

5 comments:

  1. Did you know that you aren't supposed to put christmas lights on metalic fake trees. That is b/c the trees could become conductors and everything could light on fire!

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  2. We have never had a fake tree. We were at my Dad's place this weekend and cut down a nice.....I thing it is nice it is in the basement bath tub thawing out.

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  3. They look really cool! I would probably stick one in my hair too, but that seems to be my default response for a lot of things ~_^

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  4. That is totally a great way to decorate gifts! You're so clever. =)

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  5. I loved making these as a kid! I really should make some to decorate gifts though!

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