Now these aren’t the MOST realistic looking cupcake ornaments, BUT, they are pretty fast, easy and inexpensive.
They would look more real if I could figure out a way to ‘frost’ them with spackling compound. I have the frosting tips and the compound and I know how to use a piping bag. It’s just that I’d need three hands to do it because these are so lightweight that they’d have to be ‘held in place’ while I pipes, and I need 2 hands for piping! So, this method will have to do for now!
Ingredients:
Styro snowball ornaments from Dollar Tree
Mini cupcake paper liners
Cardboard circles cut from scrap board to fit inside your paper cups.
Glue your cardboard into the bottom of your cups. IF your cardboard has a ‘design’ on it, be sure the design is facing UP. Otherwise it will show through the bottom of your cup, as the paper is fairly thin. I do this to ALL my cups at once, first.
You really NEED to use tacky glue for this next step. I pretty much use nothing but tacky glue (unless otherwise specified) for all of my gluing. For these in specific, the tacky glue is especially important because you have to HOLD the paper in place until the glue sets; which is only about a minute with tacky glue.
Put a good sized dot of glue (bigger than a pea) in the center of the cardboard base. Then put glue around the entire inside rim of your cupcake liner, going about 1/8″ down. With the way the lined is folded, you’ll only be getting glue on the INNER folds of your cup. (sorry! forgot to take a pic of that step! Will TRY to remember to take one and add it in later)
Holding the tip of the ornament, place it, centered into your cup; then use both hands to gently press the cup to the ball. It won’t hold completely right away. Just keep holding and gently pressing down for about a minute, until it no longer pulls away when released.
Just in case you’re tempted to skip adding the cardboard to the inside of your cup; this is what you will get! It will look like the one on the left.
I let mine dry overnight before this next step. Apply glitter to the exposed part of the ball. Apply a liquid adhesive (nod podge, varnish, thinned white glue) with a paint brush and sprinkle on your glitter. I do this over a bowl. After a few cupcakes there is enough glitter in the bowl that you can ‘roll’ your cupcakes in the glitter. Let this dry overnight too.
Add your sprinkles! Apply some of the same liquid adhesive to JUST the top area and sprinkle on your sprinkles. I found a BIG bottle of these colored sprinkles at Dollar Tree!
Let dry and you are done!
I got these cookie tins at Dollar Tree too.
Added tissue paper to nestle the cupcakes in the tip and a little clay ornament to decorate the top!
I’ll be selling these in my etsy shop
These are adorable! Great tutorial, thanks. Rox