Wednesday, February 11

Valentine fingerprints and chocolate lollipops

My daughter is attending a Valentine party for the little girls in her preschool-homeschool co-op today and needed a card and treat for each girl. Due to my natural inclination to procrastinate, we needed something quick and easy. But cute, of course.
We ended up making these fingerprint heart cards and chocolate lollipops. She tired out before finishing writing the whopping 8 cards (I know, she's 4), so these are a combination of her words and mine. All her fingerprints. I got the idea for the cards after seeing these on The Crafty Crow. I don't have any stamp pads, so we just colored her fingertip with washable marker. Easy clean up!

For the lollipops, we used this Wilton mold. I guess I did plan that part in advance. I purchased the mold and some candy melts a couple weeks ago at Michael's. I heated up the candy, poured it into squeeze bottles, then let my kids fill the molds. All you do after that is add the lollipop sticks and refrigerate to firm up. Quick!

The thing I did not get at Michael's, however, was a set of lollipop bags. How else do you wrap these? After recently reading this post at Martha Stewart and this one at Zakka Life, I decided to use regular old plastic zip bags. I pulled out my sewing machine (already threaded with red, luckily) and stitched through a plastic bag to make several smaller candy bags. (Pay no attention to that heart shape there. Although, if you wanted to make a heart-shaped bag, I'd say create the same rectangle shape needed as usual, but curve the top. When you tie it around the lollipop it will look like a heart). After sewing the rectangles, I cut them out, pulled them over the lollipops and tied them off.
Ta da! Cute, quick, and easy.

P.S. I've used the candy melts for lollipops, truffles, and other molded candy recently and just can't get accustomed to that flavor. Any candy makers out there familiar with another chocolate used for candy that melts well and actually tastes good?

17 comments:

  1. you're a life saver...I have one DAY to do my daughter's pre-school valentine's (which of course need to be handmade)...Whew! thanks for YOU!

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  2. Those are great looking, and I'm glad to hear that my kiddo isn't the only one the poops out halfway through a project. I would have never thought of sewing the ziplock bags. That's genius. I'm not a huge fan of the candy melts myself. They're pretty, but not too tasty.

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  3. You are a genius! Love it all but especially the wrappers you made! Creative thinking!

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  4. Sweet! I love the sewing-the-bag idea; that's great! Everything looks so cute...looks like it must have been fun, too! :)

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  5. These are so cute. I would even do this for a pary with my adult friends.

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  6. those valentines are the best though from a 4yo. love your bags! ingenious and something i hope/wish/would like to think that i would have thought of too if i were in a pinch.

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  7. I love the fingerprint-cards! It#s a really good idea for littleones.

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  8. Creativity strikes again! These are so sweet; I'm sure they will be a big hit at the party. I'm loving her handwriting on these!

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  9. I have a friend who made some candy with melts and added a smidge of almond extract and YUM!!! I could eat a whole pound. Be careful though as not to freeze up the chocolate with the liquid. Hobby Lobby sells candy flavorings as well (I have the strawberry which is tasty). I'd just be sure to use a tiny bit in a large amount of chocolate. Cute pops though!

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  10. I make dipped gingersnaps alot, and the only good dipping chocolate for them, in my opinion is the Guittard apeels.
    like these: http://www.candywarehouse.com/guittardapeels.html

    I actually bought a case of them, because i use them for everything. I have only ever tried the white, so i have no idea how good the other flavors are, but you can always add flavoring, and a drop of food coloring, like i did on these valentines day pretzels. http://atinysliceofmybeautifullife.blogspot.com/

    I actually bought a bag of the wilton candy melts the other day for a bear cake, and it was not very tasty, though it looked nice.. the kids peeled it off and ate the cake :)

    hope this helps
    -Jayne

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  11. I have never used them to make candy, but I know that Dove Chocolate melts beautifully for dipping or drizzling on cookies. I bet it would work!

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