The instructions I found online were kind of vague but I used that for my guide to start with. What I found worked out best for me is as follows...
First, gather up your supplies.
You are going to need a cup of very warm/hot water. I just used from the tap...so not boiling or anything.
- Dip the pointed end of the cone into the water and submerge the entire bottom... leaving about the top 3 inches or so dry. Hold in water for approximately 20 seconds.
- Place the dampened cone onto a microwave safe plate and place in microwave on high for 30 seconds. Since microwaves vary, you might have to adjust this time. I started with 20 seconds and that just wasn't enough time.
- Remove plate with cone from microwave and place the seam side of cone down.
- Use a wooden spoon handle to carefully flatten the cone from the middle on down to the tip.
- Once you are at the tip, curl the tip upwards around the handle of the spoon. Note: You need to work rather quickly with the warm cone once removing from microwave.
- Hold cone in desired shape for a minute or so to cool and hold its shape
- Place onto foil lined cookie sheet and proceed until you have shaped all your cones.
After finishing shaping all 12 of my cones they were still a little sticky where they had been dampened. So to speed up the drying time I popped them in the oven set at 325 degrees. Luckily I checked on them after just a few minutes, and noticed that the ends were starting to uncurl a bit with the heat. So I pulled them out, turned off the oven and turned the cones so they were all standing up on their circular base with curls pointing down. I then stuck them back in the warm oven. When I checked about 1/2 hour later they were all dry and no longer sticky.
After they were thoroughly cooled I spooned in a mixture of salted peanuts, Dark Chocolate M&M's and Peanut Butter M&M's. (luckily nobody in my family has peanut allergies!) then I covered the end with a small square of plastic wrap - secured with a rubber band. You could use candy corn or whatever mixture your family enjoys.
They were cute just like that...but thanks to SU! I made them cuter!
I started by covering the rubber band with some Autumn colored ribbon. I wanted to use up some retired ribbon I had on hand, so I went with grosgrain in Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Chip & More Mustard...mmm kind of sounds like Thanksgiving! I used a bit of double sided adhesive on bottom of rubber band so the ribbon wouldn't slide on the plastic wrap.I could have stopped with just the ribbon...but got busy in my rubber room and whipped up some cute tags as well.
First I used the Autumn Accent Bigz Die and cut out 24 acorns...12 in Cajun Craze & another 12 in Crumb Cake. I cut the Crumb Cake colored shape down into just the cap for the acorns and sponged the edges with Early Espresso ink. The now retired Square Lattice Embossing Folder gives the perfect texture to the cap of the acorn...so loaded all 12 caps in the folder and with one pass through the Big Shot they were done.
For the tags I knew I wanted to use the "thankful for you" sentiment from the Good Greetings stamp set, but couldn't decide which background pattern I liked better. So I used both the striped design from Gorgeous Grunge shown above, and the chevron design from Work of Art, shown below, to add a little texture.
To finish the little tags I just adhered the stamped strip to the back of the acorn and punched a hole in the stem. Using a small bit of Linen Thread, I attached the tag by sliding thread under the grosgrain ribbon (using a large needle helped with this) and knotting it. With the first few I made a little bow with the Linen Thread, but that was a little too tedious...so the rest just got plain knot.
Here's a look at all of them...
They were pretty easy to make, and surprisingly I didn't crack any of the cones...until I was finished and had placed them all in a large tupperware container for "safe keeping". Upon letting the air out to seal the lid, I heard a "crunch"...DOH! Luckily, the couple that got cracked are still holding together, so that's good! I think they will be a cute addition to our Thanksgiving table.
Wishing all my American readers a very HAPPY Thanksgiving Day tomorrow!
