Each week Rocks in My Dryer hosts Works for Me Wednesday - a gathering of minds and sharing of great tips and tricks of the trade. This is my first week participating and I’m really excited to share this tip - a simple holiday craft as tasty as it is cute.

Lollipop Tree

Suggested Age: My son at three and a half could do this (and only ate one lollipop!) but I can see it being fun for 3-8.

Prep Time: 10 mins I pre-trimmed the wire stems to about an inch, and cut some of the lollipop stems as well. I also did the ribbon since I didn’t want my son handling the pins.

Overall Time: About 20 mins from start to finish.

Supplies needed:

1 green foam cone (available in flower arranging section of craft store)

Thin ribbon (I used 1/2 inch)

Straight pins

Tree topper (star, flowers etc) at a suitable size for your cone - Christmas flowers worked well because there was a wire stem that fit into the cone - no gluing!

Garnishes or embellishments again with a wire stem is preferable since you won’t need glue!

Round Lollipops with assorted color wrappers (ex: dum dums)

Using straight pins (since this is out of my son’s reach pins are okay, but maybe a glue gun would work too), wrap ribbon, beginning at the top all the way to the bottom as in garland on a tree. For my tree, I wrapped the ribbon around the bottom and then back up to the top, pinning the end of the ribbon with the same pin as the beginning and also pinning at any point where the ribbon intersected. Note that I generally pointed everything downward to hopefully hold better.

Trim the garnish and tree topper wire to about an inch. Your child can push this in. Repeat for any garnishes you have, again trimming and having your child push in place.

Add lollipops, trimming the stems near the top and again having your child push into the styrofoam in a downward motion. You can add as many or as few as you want.