Candy Flower Bouquet

Ever wondered what to give someone who already has everything or who doesn't want anything?
I was invited to a wedding in Singapore and the couple didn't want anything as their biggest gift from their friends for them was us coming to Singapore for their special day.
Still I didn't want to come empty-handed, so I came up with the idea of a candy flower bouquet. And here is how I made it:


I bought all kinds of chocolates and candys (about 60 items, all separately wrapped and 2 of each type for the happy couple) and tied sewing thread around one end of their wrapping (about 30 cm per candy using a Cow Hitch knot).


The next step was to arrange 4-6 chocolates into a small bunch and tie them together. I used small pieces of wire which were quite easy to handle, but more thread can be used, too.


Lots of tying...

... and trying not to eat the chocolates myself ;)


Assembling all those small bunches into one large bouquet would have turned them into a big messy bulk, so I cut out a circle from cardboard (the back of a writing pad or any cardboard box that is at hand) and covered it with a green napkin (green paper works as well).


I attached all the small candy bunches to my cardboard circle, leaving a few centimeters between them so there is enough space for all the lovely candy. A large sewing needle works really well here, as one can easily poke holes into the cardboard to pull all the threads that were tied around the candy wrapping in step 1 through the cardboard. I tied several knots to each 2 strands of thread: to the opposite ones, to the neighboring ones etc, to attach the candy really well to the cardboard circle (Don't look at the small holes in the photo! Those were my first attempt to attach them one by one...).
Once all the candy is attached to the cardboard circle, we're almost done!

I used a cheap (green) plastic ice cream cup with a foot (shaped like a champagne glass, but more sturdy, of course) as my bouquet base and put a few cardboard squares on top (not too large so they are not visible).


The finishing touches are Tortenspitze to give it a Biedermeier look and a few fake ivory leaves (a bargain from the swedish furniture store that has been sitting among my diy stuff for a while).
The chocolate hearts are stuck to the bottom of candy like the green one in photo 2 using double-sided tape.
Doesn't look too bad, he?

Now that I am done writing this, I found this website with the same type of candy flower bouquets. They also look nice with one wrapping colour only.

Liked the idea? Create your own candy flower bouquet! It's easy! And maybe share a photo of it?!

Artsy Weekend Project

Here's my really cool weekend project: a self-made wall tattoo.

I once found this wall tattoo saying "witch kitchen" in an online store, but never got around to buying it...

Firstly, I didn't like the bright red colour that much. Secondly, the bristles of the broom were on the wrong side for what I had in mind. Thirdly, wall tattoos don't stick too well to my woodchip walls.
That was when I decided to do it myself. And here is how I did it:

I used my favorite image processing software to put the bristles on the "right" side. No need to be super perfect as the image will only serve as a stencil. Also the resolution of the product picture was rather low, but this didn't matter much either. After printing it to the proper size (split across 3 pages), I used a pen to draw over the outline (making up for the aliasing effect of my low resolution image) before cutting out all the letters.

Since I had printed it to slightly self-adhesive paper, I could then stick my stencil right to the wall. Masking tape works quite well for this, too.
The next step was to bring the outlines of my stencil to the wall using a simple pencil. Small corrections can easily be made as the dark paint will cover them anyway.

The last step after taking off the stencil was colouring my wall tattoo with the chosen colour and fine paint brushes. This took about as long as the soccer game I listened to at the same time ;) I was shaking a bit every now and then while painting, but changing position and resting my hand to the wall (carefull with the wet paint!) helped quite a bit. Also small shaky bits didn't matter too much because of the uneven woodchip wall.


So this is what it looks like now :). Cool, he?
Actually the hardest part was not to bump my head on the overhead cupboards and to be able to reach over my counter to paint the wall. It might be a good idea to paint a wall tattoo like this one BEFORE adding the furniture :).

The best part about it though: I didn't have to spend a single cent for my cool new wall tattoo! The paint was a leftover from a friend. You need really little for an image like this.