Our family celebrated Thanksgiving early this year, and I felt the urge to make a Christmas craft. I decided to create a Fun Side-Out Project. We started the day by buying our favorite flavors of microwaveable Pop Secret popcorn. I smiled as I remembered my Christmas past when I used to take the time to string popcorn for my tree! My kids always loved doing that even though I was always the last man standing.
First, I started gathering up some supplies that I had around the house. One of my favorite hobbies is to make something out of supplies I already own. After some thought, I decided I wanted to make a Christmas Tree Topiary. I headed out to my local craft store and purchased some straws, clay pots, Christmas colors of acrylic paint and styrofoam shapes. I added my new purchases to the craft items I already had and felt like I had everything I needed to begin! I tried dying my popcorn with Kool-Aid but did not like the results.
Bonus Tip: Terra cotta pots stick together when stacked. To easily separate pots simply run hot water over the pot on the bottom and immediately fill the top pot with cold water. Then gently twist them apart.
By this time, I was getting pretty excited about my idea; so I thought “why not add some gifts under my tree”? I started by punching out some shapes and started to make my gifts. My gifts needed bows, and a way to stick them into the styrofoam under the tree, so I decided paperclips would be the perfect solution. Then I had used my handy hot glue gun to assemble my gifts.
While waiting for my popcorn to pop, I decided to paint my tree styrofoam shapes green.
My original plan was to dye the popcorn green and red, but after multiple attempts at this, I decided I might be better off to keep the popcorn white. I was able to get the popcorn red by using melted white chocolate chips and food coloring, but it was difficult to get the chocolate covered popcorn to stay on the tree after gluing it on with the hot glue gun. Perhaps my troubles were caused by the texture and the weight of the popcorn? I’m not sure.
I would like to encourage you to create your Fun Side Out Project and submit the photos to the Pop Secret Facebook page or Instagram via the campaign hashtag #FunSideOut for a chance to win a year’s supply of Pop Secret Popcorn! All you have to do is create a craft using popcorn and paperclips. It can be as simple of complex as you would like. While you are working out your projects, if you find an easier way to dye popcorn and still be able to hot glue it on your project, please feel free to share it with us.
Several of my Grandchildren were here for our early Thanksgiving, so I asked them to help me out by painting the clay pots with their designs. I had a lot of fun watching how much they enjoyed their part in the project!
While we were working, we enjoyed some Pop Secret Sweet ‘n Crunchy Kettlecorn Flavor Microwave Popcorn and our time together. I may have to make this a tradition we repeat every year going forward! If you decide to participate in the Fun Side Out Project, you may be able to use this project start a new tradition, too!
Just pick up your favorite flavor of Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn and craft away!
While my Grandchildren were painting their pots, I glued the Red popcorn to my styrofoam tree shape.
Once I had the entire tree covered with the popcorn, I painted my pot and started thinking about a top for the trees. As you can see, I am more confident using a pencil eraser to make the dots than the paintbrush!
