Big Rock Candy... er, kit...

I wracked my brain trying to think of some fun food gifts that hadn't been done to death - no sense kicking a dead horse, right? - and had a bit of trouble. There are your typical home baked cookies wrapped in a jar. There are your average pinata cakes. And lots of freezer meal gifts for new moms or bad turns or recovery times. It didn't help that for some reason I'm really on a "kid gift" kick right now and couldn't seem to turn it off... and what kind of food could you make for a gift for a kid?? I mean, what kid wants FOOD instead of a toy...

UNLESS...

Unless it's candy! And what if it was DIY candy the kid could make himself? Well, then the wheels started turning...

I wish I'd thought of this in time for my nephew's birthday, I think he would have loved it. As it is, I'm going to have to hope a birthday invitation comes soon!

So, you want to throw together a DIY Rock Candy Kit? It's pretty easy!

Let's start the whole shebang by making the cute little sticks, shall we?

I got the skewers and beads at Walmart. (I have to say I LOVE these wooden beads! I think I need to buy some more and do some kind of cool jewelry...) The Skewers fit really snugly in the beads, so the glue is mostly just formality.

I made sure to color the sticks to match the 6 cups.

You could tie them together with twine, too. I just liked the bags, since it seemed the easiest way to keep all the elements separate... (I mean, you can't really tie the tiny food coloring tubes with twine, right?)

Next, just grab some clothespins - I kept mine plain, but you could paint yours or fancy them up with matching washi tape or something.

And though I missed taking a picture of this, you also want to put the food coloring in a bag, too. I picked out three colors to match, put some tape around the lids to make sure they didn't accidentally pop off (THAT would be a mess...) and put all three in the same transparent bag, tucking and taping as above.

NOW. Let's start putting it all together! Start with the little instruction card. The ribbon in the corner is obviously optional, but I couldn't resist. I'm adding ribbon to everything lately. I highly recommend printing this out on cardstock, not plain paper.

Once you're done with that, all that's left to make is the tag. I created a tag to match my kit on the computer and printed it on cardstock. Since it was a little circle, I decided to make a front and back. Here's how I put it together:

And then I just looped it around the handle of the bucket and pulled tight. Ta-da!

Now, just pack everything in nicely. (Another cool idea would be to buy a jar or bucket large enough to fit EVERYTHING inside of it, including an entire bag of sugar. Like a giant glass cookie jar or something. Then it's all totally contained with a lid and everything.)

Here are the instructions for the rock candy, all in a nice little printable so you don't have to make one yourself. The first matches the kit I made and the second is gray and black, since I have no idea what color kit YOU'LL be making. You can click and print right from the internet OR, if you need to resize them, save them to your computer with a right click. Might I also suggest covering them with contact paper or laminating them? Then they won't get gross and sticky with all the sugar water around.

Now you're wondering if I made you some printable tags aren't you? Just to make it super easy on you, right? Well, of course I did! (And it was fun, too! I think the chalkboard-esque ones are my favorite).

You can use the circle ones as two different tags, or a front and a back. Just right click to download, use the program of your choice to resize to your liking, then print!

I would like to point out that YES, I have used this "recipe"? "technique"? before and it worked! This was for mini's birthday party last year:

Perfect for the budding scientist (you could even include a little scientific explanation on the back of the How To page) OR the little sweet tooth (I mean, what kid DOESN'T love sugar water?)