Make a Chocolate Bouquet

Do you know a chocolate addict?

Mother's Day, birthdays, and holidays present great opportunities to create your own specially made bouquet of chocolates for the chocolate lover in your life. Here's how to please their sweet tooth as well as their eyes!

Steps

 * 1) Create a base for the arrangement. It could be a cardboard box or wicker basket. Put an oasis (foam base commonly used for flowers) inside.
 * 2) Choose chocolates that fit the occasion, and are firm enough to support the insertion of skewers or long thin sticks.
 * 3) Push a room temperature chocolate onto a skewer.
 * 4) Select a 20x20cm square of colorful, plain or printed tissue paper (also reflecting the occasion and matching with the theme of the bouquet) and push it onto  the end of the skewer that is not holding the chocolate. Ideally, the skewer should pierce through the center of the tissue paper.
 * 5) Pull the paper all to one end, making somewhat of a petal formation around the chocolate. Twist and secure it at the bottom with scotch tape.
 * 6) Randomly push the chocolate skewers into the box or basket. Note that the skewers in the image here do not have the tissue paper petals around the chocolates; this is just so that you can easily see the placement of the skewers.
 * 7) Gently push additional tissue paper skewers in between the chocolates.
 * 8) Finish the bouquet with a big colorful bow or decoration of your choice, depending on the occasion.

Tips

 * Make sure the chocolates are room temperature. If they are chilled, they will break.
 * As an alternative, use long stick lollipops. Omit the skewers and insert the lollipop sticks into the tissue or oasis and wrap around the lollipop. It's great for kids' parties, or for a take home party favor.
 * Instead of heavy skewers, use long toothpicks and insert them into Hershey's Kisses and make a 'Kisses Bouquet.'
 * When making it for Easter, sprinkle colored jelly beans lightly onto the tissue, near the base.
 * This is a perfect project for a teenager to make extra money by making them and selling them to friends for them to give as gifts.

Things You'll Need

 * Ferrero Rocher Chocolates (as shown) or any other chocolates
 * Colorful tissue paper depending on the holiday or occasion.
 * Cardboard box or basket.
 * Long thin sticks, lightweight skewers, or long toothpicks.
 * Scotch tape
 * Scissors
 * Colorful ribbon or any decoration
 * Oasis (a hard foam used by florists to hold flower stems in position)

Sources and Citations

 * http://www.craftbits.com/ Source of article. Used with permission