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.

Yarn candy canes are fairly easy to make as well. Simply braid strands of red yarn together and then braid strands of white yarn together. With the red braid, form your candy cane, and use spray starch for stiffening. Allow it to dry – and use a lot of starch so that it holds the shape.

Once the red yarn is dry, simply wrap the white braid around it, leaving space so that the red shows through. The ends of the white braid can be attached to the candy cane with a thread and needle.

With yarn candy canes, you may need to re-spray them with starch each year. Remember that candy canes hang from the tree by the hook of the cane. Therefore, the hook needs to be fairly sturdy to support the weight of the candy cane.

You could even make a large wall decoration with two candy canes crossed at the stem. These are made of cloth, and are actually appliqué type constructions, in that they are stuffed with quilt batting. You could also stuff them with some mint for added effect. Simply cut the ‘stripes’ of the candy canes and sew them together. Be sure to make bows for the bottom of the hooks!

For lawn candy canes, the shapes are usually cut from wood, with the use of a jigsaw. The wood is then painted with red and white paint, and you will most likely want to put some weather resistant coating over the paint, after it has dried.

These candy canes are set up with the use of a ‘T’ type stand on the back of the candy cane in most cases. This is done by attaching a block of wood to the top of the back of the candy cane. For this to work the candy cane wood must be at least a half inch thick – you don’t want the nails to come all the way through the front of the candy cane.

You can then just prop the candy cane up with a dowel or a piece of wood that goes from the ground – at an angle – to rest under the block of wood that you have attached.

All candy canes don’t have to be plain. You can dress then up with bows. The bow is usually placed on the straight part of the candy cane, just below the hook at the top. The bow can be made of any materials, and decorated as you see fit. Obviously, the size of the bow will be dependant on the size of the candy cane.

Note that making your own non-candy candy canes does not save money. Real candy canes are very cheap, and can cost just a few dollars for a box of eight to ten at any discount store.