This craft tutorial will show you how to make a fun Halloween garland with M&M’s Candy Corn candies.
Oh, how I LOVE this time of the year! Starting with Halloween, ending with New Years…I love it all. I get so excited when the stores start putting all their Halloween products on the shelves. One new product this year has been M&M’s Candy Corn White Chocolate. As soon as I heard about them, I knew I would have to get my hands on a few bags for recipes and crafting.
One thing I made was a Candy Corn Halloween Garland. I adore garlands of all kinds, and these candy corn M&M’s seemed like a perfect fit for a garland I had been wanting to make.
I learned that the M&M’s were sold exclusively at Walmart and that they are in store now, but I heard that they were hard to find. When you go to your Walmart, you might find them by the registers, but they could be in other places, such as near the entrance, on the Halloween candy aisle, or near Walmart Halloween costume area. If you still don’t find them, ask an employee! And if they don’t know, ask someone else. (I have LOTS of my shopping photos in a slideshow here)
Two bags should be enough, but 3 bags is safe. And if you don’t need them all, that’s ok. Leftover M&M’s won’t be leftovers for long. You’ll also need some fabric in orange and black, orange ribbon, and a roll of 15′ long x 40″ wide transparent cellophane (which is sold near the baskets and artificial flowers at Walmart).
First, pre-cut a bunch of fabric strips and/or ribbon. I cut my fabric strips so that they were approximately 6 inches x 1 inch. They don’t have to be cut perfectly even. I think the fabric being slightly irregular or frayed adds to the charm of the garland. The ribbon was cut to 6″ long.
Cut a piece of cellophane that is approximately 6 inches high by no more than 40 inches wide for your first section (longer than 40″ gets too difficult to manage, in my opinion). Depending on how long you want your garland to be, you will be doing 2-4 sections and then joining them all together later. Feel free to use less than 40 inches wide, if you wish, but make sure you have the 6″ high – I found that to be a good amount for fully covering the candies, but not so much that you can’t see them clearly.
Lay out your piece of cellophane on a clean, flat surface. Place 3-4 groupings of M&M’s Camdy Corn White Chocolate pieces on the cellophane, as you see in the photo below. You will want them to be centered between the top to bottom on your cellophane and the groupings should be spaced about 1-2″ from each other, from left to right. You could use less M&M’s in each grouping, if you wish, but I felt that just 3 pieces wouldn’t show up well enough, so each group had 6 candies, with the colors arrange in the same order that actual candy corn looks.
With a hot glue gun, carefully place a very small dot of glue directly onto the cellophane under each grouping of 6 M&M’s Candy Corn White Chocolates. Then, fold the top of the cellophane over on top of the M&M’s, pressing the cellophane you are folding over onto the hot glue you just placed. I find that securing with the hot glue in this stage makes creating the garland a bit easier. This is the only time I use the hot glue…just to get it started.
Here is how it looks after the top has been folded down and pressed onto the glue.
Assemble stacks of your different fabric strips and ribbon. Mattie and Courtney had fun helping with this job – I told them they could put them in any order, but that I didn’t want any duplicates in each stack. They did a great job.
Fold the bottom of the cellophane up and over the candies, while carefully keeping the candies steady. Use one of the stacks of fabric to tie each side of the first grouping closed.
Continue tying each grouping of M&M’s closed. Don’t worry so much if your M&M’s shift a bit. Mine did and I was able to work them into place before I fully tightened each tie.
After you have tied about 3-4 groupings worth of candy, the cellophane is probably holding its tubular shape better. Hold the end up where you would fill with more candies. Drop in the candies in this order: 2 yellow, 2 orange, and then 2 white. Work them into order if needed, give a slight twist or scrunch to the cellophane and then tie on another stack of fabric strips/ribbon. Continue with these steps until you reach the end of your cellophane piece.
You will probably want to create more sections to make your garland longer. Repeat all the steps above to create more sections of the garland – in the steps below, I will show you how to connect them all.
After you have created enough candy wrapped sections to make a garland as long as you would like, you are ready to connect the sections. Take two separate pieces of garland and remove the fabric strips at one of the ends on each one.
Cross the two ends over each other as seen below. Take a stack of fabric strips and bring them under the area where the two ends are crossed.
Tie the fabric strips to that they are now securing the two ends together. Pull them tightly so they won’t come apart.
Trim the ends. When you turn your garland over, you shouldn’t be able to tell where two sections have been joined. Repeat these steps for joining together the ends with all the other sections of garland you have create. (Note: if you are nervous about the connected areas coming apart, you could add a bit of hot glue to secure them)
That’s all there is to it! You should now have a long garland, ready for decorating in your home.
I have my garland on my mantel above my fireplace. Now, if I was going to use my fireplace between now and Halloween, I probably wouldn’t put it there, but since I live in Vegas, I doubt I will be turning it on this month. If you do use your fireplace during October, you can use this garland to decorate a shelf, a doorway, across the top of an entertainment center – or any other place where heat might not be a factor.
Disclosure: This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. #cbias All thoughts and opinions are, as always, 100% my own.
Randi - Dukes and Duchesses says
Super cute! I just love how that looks!
Jamie B says
I had no idea they had candy corn colored m&ms… this is the cutest! I hope it’s okay, I just finished a Halloween crafts/decor round-up and just couldn’t resist featuring your cute candy garland..You can see it here:
http://jamiebrock.hubpages.com/hub/Super-Cute-DIY-Project-Ideas-Decorating-for-Halloween
Thank you for the wonderful tutorial.. I actually have some strips of orange and black gingham fabric like you used here… I might have to give this a try 🙂
brandie says
Thanks so much, Jamie! I’m honored to be featured in your Halloween round up too. 🙂
jenny - sugar loco says
SOOO ADORABLE!!