candy corn tree {craft time}

I saw these adorable candy corn branches in Woman’s Day and had to try them out. I thought they would be perfect for our downstairs mantel.

1. First up, you’ll need branches. You can save time by leaving them natural and skip down to the next step. I spray painted mine black, then applied spray adhesive, and sprinkled fine black glitter on top of the adhesive. I truly had pictures of this process but can’t for the life of me find them. Do you ever erase pics accidentally? Oh well. Imagine braches in the dirt outside, spray painted, adhesived, then glittered. Next time I would use the chunky glitter like the buckets below have. The fine doesn’t seem to show up as well on the branches.

2. I picked up some buckets from the kind-of dollar spot at Target, ($2.50 each) some foam filler-$4, dollar tree candy corn--$1 (it doesn’t taste as good, but the colors seem brighter to me than other brands), and a black piece of paper (from my stash)

3. put the piece of paper behind the pumpkin face and then stick the branch and fill it about halfway with the foam. It will expand, so don’t fill it all the way up. (isn’t this the best idea to set branches?? from pinterest. of course.) I just leaned it up against the house and let it set for the afternoon (5-7 hrs or overnight), then fire up your glue gun.

4. cover up the foam with some moss,

5. and then begin hot-gluing candy corns all over. This is going to be ok in our house because my kids aren’t crazy about candy corn. I don’t think it would taste that great with the glue anyway??

And there they are. Happy jack-o-lanterns holding candy corn branches!

I strung up a banner from Target...I was contemplating making one, but saw this with my Mom when she was visiting and $4 later my contemplation was over.

The starch ghosts came out from last year to join us, and that’s it: our family room mantel. I would be lying if I said it’s under $10 and under 1 hour, so I won’t. Total cost: banner: $4, starch ghosts (from last year), branches-free, black spray paint-in my stash, spray foam $4, candy corn $1 at dollar tree, buckets $2.50 each, moss $2 from dollar store, total $16. Not too shabby.

Are you all ready for Halloween? One week! Yikes.