Halloween craftiness: Candy Corn Wreath

I don't often pay full price for magazines on principle--I either find a super-cheap subscription or I use a 40% off coupon at JoAnns, but when I saw the cover of the October Woman's Day magazine at the grocery store I threw it in my cart without a second thought and happily paid full price.

image copyright Woman's Day magazine

The cover image is of this great candy corn wreath and I thought it would make a fun project for Maren and I to do together. The step-by-step instructions are here on the Woman's Day website, so I won't go through those in detail.

I used a 16" green foam wreath from JoAnn's--it was $7.99, less my 40% off coupon. I got the kind of wreath form that has rounded edges on the front, but the back is flat. I love my Dollar Tree $1 green wreath forms but for this project I wanted a wreath that had some flat space so the candy corn didn't slide off when I laid it out. The instructions suggest to cover your wreath form in black duct tape but I didn't want to waste my good Gorilla Tape, so instead I covered the wreath form with strips of black fabric like I did for my paperback book wreath.

 I used approximately two 22-ounce bags of Brach's candy corn. It's hard to tell exactly how much I used because I let Maren eat some before I started the wreath, and then you have to pick out the wonky corns as well. I did end up opening a third bag but I was only short by about 20 corns, so I know if we hadn't eaten any beforehand two bags would have been plenty.

I did place out my candy corns before gluing like the instructions suggested, but I only did one ring at a time. I put my hot glue on the candy itself rather than the wreath so that it wouldn't show. It was really quite easy--Maren helped me lay out the corns, then I glued them down.

I had one big issue that makes my wreath look different from the one on the magazine cover. On the WD version, all of the orange middles of the candy line up, giving it a really symmetrical look, kind of like spokes radiating out from the center. The corns aren't necessarily touching head-to-toe; there are some gaps between them so that the orange middles will line up but the gaps are pretty small, which means that all the candy corns were just about the same size.

When I laid out my first ring (and I started from the center out), I put them head-to-toe. When I laid out the second ring, I put them head-to-toe going the other direction, but because of the bigger ring and the variation in the size of the corns, the oranges didn't necessarily line up. By the third ring I realized that my wreath didn't look as neat as the WD version, and I tried to do a better job of lining up the oranges rather than having the corns touch. That worked at first, but after a while it resulted in some pretty big gaps where the black showed through, and that bugged me. So then I went back to doing the head-to-toe again. In some place the oranges line up, and in some places they don't.

I do like how tidy the rows of candy corn on the WD wreath are, but I'm sure WD has editorial assistants who get paid to make sure all 435 candy corn are exactly the same size, and I'm trying to glue on candy corns in between cooking dinner and shoving snacks at my 13-month-old to keep him from screaming. So my wreath is imperfect, and that's just how it's going to have to be.

I hung my wreath with wide black satin ribbon and I think it's pretty darn cute! I like the bright festive colors but the shape itself is very unfussy; from a distance it makes a really cool pattern and almost looks like it is beaded.

On the Woman's Day website there's an additional page of instructions on how to preserve your candy corn so your wreath will last longer and not end up as insect food. Those weren't in the magazine and involve letting your candy corn dry out for several days, then spraying them on both sides with clear preserving spray. Honestly, that sounds like a giant pain in the bum so I'm glad I skipped it! I might give my wreath a coat or two of clear Krylon spray to make it shinier, but that's only if I can find my spray--I'm not going to go out any buy any specifically for this project. I live in a very dry climate so I don't have to worry about my candy becoming sticky and bugs aren't really an issue for us.

There are some other really cute candy corn craft ideas in that magazine that I'd love to try, like a candy corn garland and cool candy corn balls but I'm not sure if I'll get to those this year--they might have to be on the crafting list for Halloween 2011.