It's Handmade: Ant Picnic Food Toppers

Monday, 20 May 2019

Ant Picnic Food Toppers

These ants go marching one by one – straight into your heart! I usually lose my appetite when I see an ant crawling on food at a picnic, but these oversized handmade ants don’t bug me one bit.

They are perfect décor, cupcake or food toppers, or buddies to bring to your next picnic or outdoor party. Mine are going to a cookout on our back porch to celebrate the last day of school. They love watermelon, Bundt cake, and sticky popsicles! Be sure to make a Mama and some baby ants…also known as inf-ANTS!

what you need:

• Regular and mini craft foam eggs
• 1 ½” and 1” Styrofoam balls
• Apple Barrel Black Acrylic Paint
• Folk Art Glitterific Acrylic Paint in black opal
• Sponge brush (x2)
• 2 Toothpicks (per large ant)f
• Tacky glue
• Scissors
• 24 GA (.51mm) Black vinyl coated bead wire

how-to:

Step 1
Paint two eggs (per ant) using a sponge brush in black acrylic paint. Allow to dry.

Step 2
Use another sponge brush to paint the black eggs in black opal Glitterific paint, and allow to dry.

Step 3
Stick a toothpick through the middle of the wide end of the regular eggs to attach them together. Attach the mini eggs using tacky glue.

Step 4
Cut off about ¼ of a toothpick, and insert half of the longer portion into your 1 ½” Styrofoam ball. Use the other half of the toothpick to attach the ball to the egg “body”. Attach at one end, and slightly above the eggs, so it is not aligned perfectly with the body. Basically, make it look like a head! Use tacky glue to attach the 1” Styrofoam ball to the mini egg body.

Step 5
For the large ant, cut six 3 ¼ inch and two 1 ½ inch strips of wire. For the mini ant, cut six 1 ½ inch and two 1 inch strips of wire. Bend the 6 longer pieces in the middle at right angles. Insert them into the sides of the ant body, evenly spaced apart to look like legs. You may want to add a little glue to the tips before inserting the ends, to help them stay in place.