Dum Dum Topiary with Bonus Tootsie Roll Pops!

For Sophie’s birthday party, I decided to make a Dum Dum topiary. I got the idea from this post on dollarstorecrafts.com. I thought it’d be neat to sprinkle some Tootsie Roll Pops in there because I like those. 🙂 Here’s what it looked like:

From April 2010

A few things about this craft. For one, when I looked back at the post that inspired this idea, I clearly got too big of a Styrofoam ball to make it. I tried to get a ball that was proportional to my container. This means that I ran out of candy when making it! Also, once I sent Rick to the store to get more candy, I still ran out! So the topiary had a bald spot, seen here:

So yeah, it used way more candy than I thought it would. I just tried to turn it so that you didn’t see its bald spot. Mistake #2 was that I tried to outsmart myself. I didn’t want to get a dowel because I’d have to cut it to size and also the dowels are unfinished. Instead, I bought a pack of plain colored pencils in the dollar section of Michaels. Well, the pencils really weren’t long enough, or thick enough. So I taped two together with an overlap a little bit. This was an ok fix. It probably would have been better if I’d added a third or fourth one, but it worked.

Mistake #3 was that the cute little Pooh container that matched Sophie’s high chair decorations for the party was not heavy enough. I needed to at least put something heavy in the bottom to counterweight that heavy ball of candy on top. So the topiary was a little bit tipsy. But again, it worked well enough.

In spite of these mistakes, I think it turned out really cute and I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again! Just next time I can learn from my mistakes and make it better. And maybe now someone else can learn from these mistakes too.