In my brainstorming about candy canes, I of course came across the traditional idea of the pipe cleaner ornament. A staple of Christmas tree for years, I wanted to come up with something a little bit different, perhaps even a little less…fuzzy.
So I wandered through the craft store and waited for creativity to hit me over the head. In the floral aisle I came across this raffia covered wire and thought it could be just the thing to evoke the simplicity and tradition of a pipe cleaner candy cane but done in a slightly more grown up version.
I painted half of the wires white and half of them red. Make sure you get a really thorough coat because when you twist the wires together some of the raffia will unravel and reveal the underlying layers of brown.
Twist a white and a red wire together. After a few trials and errors, I found the easiest way to do this to be to match up the middles and twist toward the ends.
The wires that I bought were long enough to make two candy canes, so I used wire cutters to cut them in half, and then bent one end to make the crook.
On my white tree they blend in enough to just give a pop of color in those few little bare spots. I think these are also easy enough, and cheap enough to be a really cute package decoration, or tied in the middle of a bow on a gift basket.
