Stuff I Made: Flower and Candy Leis

2011 was a busy year for the Nigg Family, between Senior Year and subsequent graduation of said senior, Jordan being the lead in his school play, lots of travel to see Europe before moving back to the States, moving from Germany to Savannah, Georgia...the list goes on!  During all those fun moments, I kept forgetting to post pics of the leis I made for the kids.  Unfortunately I didn't take step by step photos of how to make them but I thought I'd at least post the pics so you could see them and post some sort of tutorial later.  You may be asking yourself, why leis?  My dad grew up in Hawaii and the lei is a huge part of any celebration.  If you see graduation photos in Hawaii, the graduates are usually so covered with leis, you can barely see the graduate!  When my dad graduated from USF, our family came from Hawaii with a huge box of leis to put on my dad when the graduation was over and my mom handmade carnation leis for my high school graduation many moons ago, so of course I had to carry on the tradition. 

Here's George Washington aka Jordan, post school play and sans wig, showing off his candy lei.  This is super easy to make:  measure out the cellophane to the length you want the lei, lay out your candy along the length of the cellophane, roll the cellophane around the candy and tie off in between.  I use clear packaging tape to secure the end and a bunch of curling ribbon to hide the tape at the back.  My mother-in-law helped me make a boat-load of these as a farewell gift to Jordan's class at the end of the school year...she'll probably think twice about coming to visit now :)

I made three leis for Alex's high school graduation:  two from carnations and one made with dollar bills.  You can find plenty of tutorials on how to make flower leis online.  The money lei was a bit more complicated and tedious but worth it in the end.  The lei shown here has $100 worth of ones attached, which makes for a pretty long lei.

And as you can see here, the graduate is sure to love the gift!

Hopefully I'll get my act together and post some step-by-step tutorials soon.