Make Christmas Non-Candy Candy Canes

Candy canes are a vital part of Christmas. Most of us buy candy canes and put them in candy dishes designed for stick candy, and we even use them as decoration on the tree. When we take the tree down, we either eat the candy canes used for decoration – or we throw them out.
 
You can make non-candy candy canes very easily – and use them year after year. One advantage of this is that the non-candy candy canes that you make won’t break as easily as candy canes do. They also don’t get eaten.
 
Non-candy candy canes can be made out of a wide variety of materials, depending on how large you want your candy canes to be. Possible materials include wood, yarn, foam, Styrofoam, and cloth.
 
Some materials, such as cloth, will need a stabilizer which the cloth will be placed over. This might be wood or pipe cleaners, depending on how strong you need your candy canes to be. Spray starch can also be used to make many candy canes stronger, if cloth or yarn is used.
 
The easiest possible candy canes to make for your tree are made with pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners, however, are typically thin. You may need to twist five or six pipe cleaners together to form your candy cane.
 
This form can then be covered with shinny ribbon, for the best looking candy cane. You will need white and red ribbon, and the ribbon should be about 1 centimeter wide. It should have plain edges, as opposed to fancy edges. Cut small pieces of the red ribbon, and cover the bottom end of the candy cane and the top end, under the hook. Glue the ribbon in place.
 
Using a hot glue gun, glue the edge of the red ribbon to the bottom edge of the candy cane. Spiral it up until the entire candy cane is covered with the red, and glue the other end to the candy cane as well. Cover the entire thing in red, so that none of the pipe cleaner shows.
 
Next, take the white ribbon and glue one end to the bottom edge of the candy cane and spiral it up, leaving spaces between the white spirals so that the red shows through. Glue the end to the top edge of the candy cane, at the hook.

Candy cane shapes can also be cut out of Styrofoam, but it is ideal to have a pattern to work with and to cut carefully with an exactor knife, so that you have nice smooth edges. The foam can then be wrapped or painted.
 
next make Christmas non-candy candy canes part 2
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