Craft Project: How to Make a Patriotic Candy Wreath for American Holidays

Americans celebrate several patriotic holidays from Veteran's Day to Election Day, to President's Day, to Memorial Day, to Flag Day to Independence Day and others throughout the year. We show our patriotism not only through respectful thoughts and prayers, but by showing our proud American colors of red white and blue. Patriotism prevails through many American crafts, because it is so important to so many people. It is how we express ourselves through the extension of something being hand made.

This fun Patriotic Candy Wreath is easy and inexpensive to make and tasty to eat. It is a colorful celebration of being American and decorating with a craft to reflect that feeling.

You can easily pull the candy off the wreath by just giving a little tug on the piece of candy you want. Kids really enjoy this kind of edible wreath decoration.

Here is What you need to get started:

A wrapped candy in white
A wrapped candy in red
A wrapped candy in blue
Thin wire garland in either red white or blue
Blue twist ribbon
a silk flower
a wire coat hanger
florist or craft wire
scissors

The candy I used to make this patriotic wreath was cinnamon discs for red, individually wrapped Wintergreen Lifesavers for white, and Vanilla Tootsie Rolls for blue. If you go to your grocery store, you are likely to see candy sold by the pound, and you can pick out other hard or soft candies that are individually wrapped in red, white and blue. Between a pound and 1.5 pounds of candy is enough to make a wreath of this size. If you want a fuller wreath, you can use 2 pounds of candy. The blue twist ribbon I paid a dollar for at the dollar store and there was still ribbon left over. Twist ribbon is a paper ribbon wrapped around thin wire so it easily bends around packages and crafts. The paper can be pulled or fanned open. In fact, you can use the twist ribbon fanned out to create a bow for the wreath, if you don't have or want to use a flower. The candy I used cost about a buck for each bag, at Walgreen's or Wal-mart.

Instructions:

1. Take the wire coat hanger and bend it open to form a circle. It may take a few minutes and a little bit of muscle to shape it, but shape it into a circle as best as you can. Thinner wire hangers will be quicker to shape, but a heavy wire hanger is recommended.

2. Take your twist ribbon and secure it at one end of the hanger. Then proceed to wrap the wire hanger with the ribbon until the hanger is covered in color.

3. Take your florist or craft wire and cut into an 8 inch strip.

3. Take 10 candies of the same color wrapper and poke the wire through one of the ends of the wrapper.

4. Attach the wire string of candy to the wreath. Repeat the procedure by using 10 candies of the same color and attaching. Put red next to blue or white, etc, to provide color contrast between each string of 10. Repeat until the wreath is full of candy.

5. Take your thin wire garland (mine happened to be of red stars), and attach it to the wreath, either in the center of the circle, or wrapped around the outside.

6. Attach the flower at the top of the wreath, using wire. Or, some flowers are clip on. Or, you can attach a ribbon in patriotic colors instead.

7. Hang and enjoy!

Tips:

If you don't have twist ribbon, you can use fabric ribbon.

You can use any circular metal shape. If you don't have a wire coat hanger, you can use your florist wire and for a circle, however, make it several pieces thick and join together, so it can handle the weight of the candy.

If you have a couple of little American flag decorations, you can poke those into the wreath too.