My Funny Anti-Valentine: DIY Favors To Troll Your Frenemies

I'm no good with traditional Valentine crafts, peeps: I can never think of anything interesting! So this year I decided to embrace my Weird Side, and just do stuff that makes me laugh.

Enter the humble Circus Peanut:

I posted that to my Story as a throw-away joke last week, but the reaction was so immediate, so visceral, that I quickly realized this had to happen. (I've never seen so many puking emojiis in my life, thank y'all for that. :D)

It took me a while to figure this one out, but in the end, it's dead simple, funny, and pretty cheap to make. So if you've got an extra $10 laying around coupled with a burning desire to make your friends go, "Wait... what?" THEN FOLLOW ME.

::marches proudly onward::

First head to your local Dollar Tree and stock up on the 5 worst candies you can find. This is obviously subjective (I actually love Circus Peanuts, go fig), but here's what John and I came back with:

Smarties, black licorice, Bit O' Honeys, Circus Peanuts, and some sugar free hard candies. These were all $1 each.

True Facts: John and I drove all over town looking for Necco Wafers, only to be told the company went bankrupt and they're no longer made?? Womp womp.

Next you'll need some wooden skewers ($1 at Walmart) and a clear plastic treat bags. I already had the bags, but you can find them at most craft stores in the wedding or cake aisle for cheap:

 

The last thing you'll need is a hot glue gun, some red or pink card stock, and ribbon. 

I guess I've held you in suspense long enough, so here's my finished candy bouquet/favor:

 

It's surprisingly cute, right? And of course you could make one with GOOD candy if you want, but my way is funnier. To amp up the troll factor I added "Some people deserve the very best..."  on top. That ellipsis says it all, am I right, grammar nerds? And yes, it IS printed in Comic Sans, clever of you to notice!

Subtle Troll Level: cranked to ELEVEN.

Again, you could change this up and add your own message up top, like "I Like You Better Than These Candies" or "Sweet As You Are." (I like the subtle burns the most, ha.)

Obviously this is for close friends and meant purely as a joke, so please don't go being poopy-heads to people, people. Not that I think you will, but just putting that out there. Wheaton's Law and all that.

I experimented with soooo many ways to put these all together - I even rage quit for a while - but in the end I discovered less is more. So, easy-peasy, here's what you do:

 

 Hot glue the wrapped candies to the ends of the skewers - one candy per stick. Skewer a single Circus Peanut, then cut off about 1/3 of the licorice (otherwise it's too long), and skewer that, too.

Arrange your candies like this in the treat bag:

 

 When you're happy with how it looks, scrunch the bottom of the bag around the sticks and twist tie it shut:

 Then trim all your sticks to roughly the same length.

 Finally, hot glue the bag to your paper heart and add a bow:

 Ta-daaa!

These finishing touches are what really make the whole craft, so I'll include the template John made for our hearts, in case you'd like to use it. You can print two per page:

Right-click to embiggen, then hit "save to disk."

 Not the easiest to photograph with the shiny plastic, but you get the idea:

With this amount of candy you could make a dozen favors, maybe more. I've only made 3 so far, still debating who to spring them on:

 In the meantime, I'll just be over here eating all the Circus Peanuts. Hee.

K, sound off in the comments: Which 5 candies would you use? Which of these do you actually love? And is anyone here brave enough to actually give troll favors to your friends/co-workers? :D (I really want some reaction shots, pretty please and thank you.)

 *****

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