Candy bouquets make great centerpieces or gifts for just about any occasion. Here are some instructions for creating your own candy topiary bouquet in either a flower pot or mug.

1. Either buy/find a flowerpot or mug to match your theme. For instance, for Mother's Day, you might want to use a flowerpot or mug with a Spring floral theme.

2. If you are using a mug, you will want to buy a piece of floral foam (to cut to size and put inside the mug base), a dowel rod (to stick in the base and form the topiary) and a Styrofoam ball (to stick at the end of the dowel rod and form the upper end of the topiary). If you are using a flower pot, you can buy the supplies described for the mug or you can buy one of the pre-made topiary forms that set directly in the flowerpot. I've seen these forms with a Styrofoam pot-shaped base and Styrofoam ball top at Michael's and Joanne Fabrics. If you go with the pre-made form, you can hot glue it directly into the flower pot.

3. Once you have your form in either your mug or pot, you should hot glue Spanish moss or other decorative items such as shells, dried flowers, etc to the to the top of the base foam to basically hide the foam that makes up the base.

4. Buy some floral pins and hard candies. I recommend getting hard candies that color-coordinate with your theme such as fruit bon-bons in pastel wrappers for Mother's Day or Easter and red/white hard peppermint candies for Christmas. Take a metal floral pin and stick it through the end of the candy wrapper (just outside the twisted end) and then stick the floral pin with the attached candy on to the round Styrofoam topiary ball. Keep repeating this process until the entire ball is covered with hard candies and you can't see any Styrofoam peeking through.

5. To dress up the candy bouquet, you can floral pin ribbons or small silk flowers between some of the hard candies. Also, tie pieces of ribbon around the dowel right below the Styrofoam ball. It looks great if you leave the ribbon tails long enough to hang down and disguise the wood dowel. I recommend either using curling ribbon or 1/2" wide organza ribbon for this task.

You've successfully completed your candy topiary bouquet! Use the beautiful bouquet as a centerpiece at your next celebration or give it as a great gift for Mother's Day, Valentine's Day or any occasion!

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