Ready to brighten up your home with some lovely Valentines’ decor? So here it is: the quintessential Valentine’s Day candy and the enjoyment of making craft memories with your little ones, all in one craft.  I saw this idea originally on Pinterest and decided to give it a try and make it my own.  Get ready to share some love!

Materials

 

Hot glue gun
additional glue gun sticks
styrofoam shapes for your topiary (I used a 5” sphere and a cone; 3” sphere/ball would also work)
Styrofoam block
12” Wooden, Round Dowel (for 5” and larger styrofoam balls -3/8 inch ; for 3” you could do 1/4-inch dowel.)
Candy Hearts (approximately 1 8-oz bag per 5” cone)
Washi/Paper Tape (I used a green chevron)
Preserved Moss
Tin pail or clay pot
Embellishments, optional (bakers twine, ribbon, paper flowers)

Steps
Turn on your hot glue gun, prepare your area to work.

Take a 12” strip of Washi tape and lay flat, sticky side up. Place dowel in the middle of the tape and slowly roll to one side then the other. Press out any extra bubbles or “off” spots.

Take your styrofoam shape and your dowel and insert in the center, bottom of the topiary shape. Gently press the dowel in approximately 3 inches. Now, gently bring it back out and add hot glue to the tip of the dowel and about 2 inches along the top of the dowel. Re-insert into the styrofoam shape, helping to secure it in place.

 

Begin glueing candy hearts along the styrofoam shape by placing either short rows or short columns of hot glue onto the styrofoam and then placing a candy heart there. Repeat, often, and a lot, and then some more.  Be cautious as hot glue can burn your fingers.  (I’m wondering if the Southern phrase “hot mess” came from a group of Southern women doing a craft with a glue gun.)

Tips:

• Start toward the top and work your way either around or up and down. You can stagger each column to minimize the showing of the styrofoam. It doesn’t have to be perfectly linear. Try to keep the colors varied.
• For younger kids, have them help you vary the colors– help them practice colors and read some of the candy hearts together.
• Your once-light styrofoam shape with become very heavy as it becomes covered in candy hearts.  I learned this by trial and error and this is why I suggest a larger diameter dowel as your sphere size increases.
• Once the shape is covered, place a styrofoam block into the bottom of a small container– galvanized mini pails or small terra-cotta pots can work well.  (I had two from the Target Dollar Spot and one from IKEA.  I’ve seen the terra-cotta pots at the Dollar Tree, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and Joann’s too.)
• Take the free end of the dowel (bottom) and insert into the foam block and pail. Stuff paper in the pail to surround the dowel. Add a layer of preserved moss on the top and embellish with bows, twine, and flowers– or others way too.

I’d love to see how yours turns out! Post yours on Instagram and tag me: @krissymillar