GIANT LOLLIPOPS - DIY Tutorial

Today we're going to be making giant lollipops made entirely out of pool noodles and pvc. Now each lollipop ranges in size from five and a half feet to almost seven and a half feet tall. So join me for this ride. So to start building our lollipops we're going to need standard size pool noodles. Now I got this one on Amazon but they're available at Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Target, Walmart, Lowe's, Home Depot, you name it. But since it's off season your best bet right now is to get it at Dollar Tree or to get it online. So I picked the color blue so for my swirl effect I'm going to use this lime green. Now this is duct tape. This particular company makes this in about 10 different colors and I have them all but I thought the lime green would be a nice contrast to the blue here. So what we're going to do is we're just going to unfurl it like this and starting from the top we're going to place it like that and start doing the candy cane twirl effect is what I or swirl effect should I say. And just like this we're going to keep on going down just being careful to make sure that everything is sticking. Look how easy we're almost halfway there. So once we do this we're going to do one and then we're going to do two more. We need a total of three pool noodles for this size lollipop that we're making. The more pool noodles you add the harder it gets. So every time I've made pool noodles in the past that became lollipops it was always tedious time consuming and could really put a workout in because you have to hold it down while you wait for the hot glue to dry. So I built a little wooden contraption that I hope cuts that in half because every time I make them I can spend hours making a couple of them and it's just never that fun. So I'm going to show you now this little contraption I made. Hopefully it makes everything easier makes it simpler for you the viewer. So let me show you what I made. So for this contraption I'm going to be making I'm going to be using three pieces of two inch by three inch wood. Now each piece has been cut to 20 inches and as you can see we have three. So basically what we're going to do one piece on the bottom one piece in the middle on the side and another piece right across from it like this. So you want it to look just like that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my pre-drill tip and as some people have mentioned what size tip am I using? I actually don't know because all my tips are mixed up but this tip is just smaller than the screw that I'm using. So when you're going to do a pre-drill just find a that is smaller than the width of the screw that you're using. But I actually don't know what size is it. So we're going to go like this put it like that pre-drill on this side put two screws pre-drill on the other side put two screws and we're done with this one. We have ourselves our contraption. Now that we have attached this like this we're going to be using two screws. Now I have three inch screws that are here and I also use three inch screws down here but we could have used smaller screws it's just what I had lying around. So these two screws are going to go in right here on the side on either side just like on both sides should I say like this. You can put it halfway up like this you can put it lower I'm going to go just a little bit lower than halfway and go right there. I've already pre-drilled my holes and I'm just going to go in just like that you don't want to come out on the inside. So we're going to do the same thing on this side perfect I didn't come out on the inside just like this so you have them like that and what this is going to act as an it's going to act as an anchor for this rope. I had this rope lying around and I'm just going to tie a simple knot on this rope just like that you see this knot right there and what we want this to do is go like this to the other side like that so this is going to act as the anchor to hold down the pool noodles once we start rolling it up but it doesn't only have to be at the top like this once the pool noodle gets to maybe this height right here we can bring it through the side or we can do it like this the side and then do it like that this is only what we're doing to try to hold down the pool noodle from pushing up but since this rope is easy to detach I'm probably going to just end up doing cutting it right here or like this and making a little knot right there once it's that side then as it keeps on growing as your pool noodle lollipop keeps growing you can keep on attaching the rope because it's going to want to push up on you but doing it this way will save you time and strength because holding down that pool noodle while you wait for the hot glue to dry is just so tedious and time consuming so let's see if this kind of weird contraption that I made works so like I said with the rope just tie a simple knot here this rope is actually about four feet long you could use twine you could use ribbon just anything that you're able to tie up and it has good enough strength that it won't tear so for the rolling process this is how we're going to do it so as you can see the tape on the bottom we just roll it in on itself like that we're perfectly fine so what we're going to do is we're going to grab the first four to five inches and we're going to roll it in on itself just like this okay once you do that we're going to continue this rolling process but we need to put hot glue in here generous amounts of hot glue and you want to work fast because it's nice and cool outside it'll start drying faster so we're going to start doing that hot glue circle make a circle and then turn it around just like this and we're going to keep on doing that until we've completely rolled it up and don't worry about your tape crinkling or anything like that it'll be fine we just need to roll this up and we need to do it rather quickly and that's where this little contraption comes in because as this is drying you're going to be holding it and you need to hold it until the glue dries and the glue can take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half to dry if you release too soon the strength of this kickback is going to undo all your hard work so you need to make sure that the hot glue has dried before releasing it so let's get started so i have my glue gun i also have my gorilla glue clear duct tape because we're going to need this one and we're going to need this one to tie up the ends once we get to that part you need to put some hot glue in here stick it to the other piece make sure you follow the same type of pattern so like this and then wrap it with some of this gorilla clear duct tape so like i said we're going to fold the first four inches i'm going to put a bit of hot glue in there and we're going to do it like this then we're going to continue this like i said move fast so look i'm putting hot glue on about 12 inches of pool noodle and then i start and this is where this apparatus comes in the pool noodle is going to try to push out it's going to try to come out this way come out that way get all wonky so this is helping us keep everything straight in line like that so let me grab my other stick of glue we're going to go through a lot of glue so have your glue handy and as always i'm using gorilla gorilla glue hot glue so we're going to continue the process get on this side maybe the camera can see it and just start putting generous amounts of hot glue as you can see i'm putting generous amounts the hot glue starts melting through the pvc but that is okay we just want a healthy amount of hot glue then we continue with the rolling process roll it roll it okay and right there i'm getting a lot of bounce back this wants to let go and go flying this is where our rope comes in keeping it nice and taut like that attach it on the other side just like so um i could let it go but i feel it wants to undo itself so this is where you could do the simple knot like it did on the opposite side but i'm just going to hold it right there and essentially we're just waiting for it to dry instead you'd have to be holding it in place like this and sometimes i would hold it for up to i don't know two minutes to ensure that the glue was dried on the inside and that puts a workout in that's it definitely puts a workout in so while i'm doing this holding it gently like that i'm going to put another stick of glue if it fits okay and i'm going to put more glue right here like i said healthy amounts of glue and then i'm going to let this go and i'm going to continue rolling it up and actually i put a bit too much glue over here because we want to leave about four to five inches that's okay i'm just going to remove that glue right now get my rope back on this side and this one i'm actually going to make a little knot right there i'm going to put this up like that and that's we're going to let this dry really quickly like this okay so i wanted to show you this look how cool i was only attaching it originally from the front but because you want to make sure that it doesn't move back i just wrapped it around like this and then brought it to this side and then made a simple knot like so and then tighten it up so now we're holding it from the front and the back and we can be working on whatever else we need to be working while we ensure that this hardens completely and then we don't have to be holding it we don't have to be straining ourselves this is super simple so now let me show you how we're going to attach the next pool noodle let me just adjust my camera so now really simple we're going to apply hot glue a lot of it right over here right here then we're going to make sure we follow the same shape you don't want to do it like this this is going to look a little wonky so just move it to the approximate shape so that it looks like it's kind of going along the same route that the other one is so i have here my clear duct tape only because i like to reinforce the seams because the amount of pressure that's being put when we're making this into you know a circular figure is a lot so after i put hot glue i'm going to put that duct tape so see i'm putting a generous generous amount of hot glue in there and then simply like so and going to get a piece of duct tape i'm going to make sure it's tight like that and i'm going to circle it just like that so normally you want to go all the way around it and that's why i said i don't want to put hot glue all the way down here and i had to remove some of it and since it's really really tight in there i'm just going to slip it underneath just like so and that way it provides a little bit more reinforcement at the seam while allowing the hot glue to bind these two together so once this dries we can continue doing our lollipop shape again so a couple minutes have passed and this is hardened this is also hardened in here but remember it's only being held down by the glue and this glue isn't insanely strong it's pretty good but there's still built up pressure in here so you just want to be careful that you still keep a hand on it while you're rolling this up so i'm going to quickly remove these over here like so and on this side as well and now we're going to continue with our rolling process okay so i have my glue sticks ready and i have my glue gun so again generous amounts of glue there you go and then we start the rolling process once more just we last left off there you go there you go perfect and then let's roll remember keep pushing down as you roll there we go there we go and now that we're here we're going to put in another glue stick and continue with your glue and then we continue remember to keep pressure on it from the top as you roll we're trying to do all of this in in one roll without having to strap it down you want to leave several inches out so this is about six to eight inches that i'm leaving out so that i have enough room to work with when i attach the next piece so remember you want to make sure that this is in the middle of your lollipop right there and we're going to go like this so now just like so oh and i can actually probably do it this way there we go make sure it's held on down really good just like this see and look how i look how i did it i went from one side to the other side look how i'm discovering things this this is actually a better hold when you do it like that and as you can see perfect circle everything is going just as planned this is making it super super easy so as we wait for this part to dry i actually ended up using four pool noodles because if i didn't it wasn't going to be the same size as the other lollipops that i've made so for this jumbo size nice look i would definitely use four pool noodles and this contraption has made it so easy i i'm shocked that i didn't think of this before it made it easy and fast you don't have to hold it and best of all it keeps it in place it keeps it straight none of the insides are wobbling or looking wonky it's just perfect so now we're just going to finish it up really quickly and be done with it now that we're at the end right over here look i want to show you this look how straight all the sides are it's just perfect just perfect how it is so we're gonna grab our rope and for the last time for the very last time we're going to attach it right here just like that make sure it's nice and taut and do a basic loop and there we go we'll let this dry but look at this oh see over here it's still open so we just have to turn it a little bit more you know just like so right there and what you want to do is make sure that this part right here touches the end right there so we need to turn it just a little bitty more and bam just like that oh my goodness look how awesome this is i'm i'm so excited this is so exciting i can't believe i didn't think of this before this little wood three piece contraption made everything so much easier it cut the time to make this in half didn't put any strain on anybody's arms i love it so we're just going to wait for this to dry and then we're going to do the finishing pieces so before we undo the rope and take it out i like to pick a side that i like less than the other both sides look great but for this reason i'm going to pick this side and this side i'm going to apply extra glue in these seams and this might be a bit of overkill but i like to make sure that these stay glued together so i'll get my glue gun and i'll just follow the seam just like that applying glue gun glue gun applying glue in between all of that so i always like making the hole right next to where the last p pool noodle came to so i'm probably going to make the hole right there and we're going to go straight through maybe not to all the way through the third one but this looks like i can make it to two and a half so we simply put it right here and we burn through look how easy right there burn through just like that and then like that you don't want to keep it in there for too long because it just melts everything super super fast and we'll probably need to make this hole a little bit bigger because we're using a one inch pvc but that's how you do it easy breezy you can't go wrong with that now that i've cut my pvc to the length i want it it's time to insert it into the lollipop side note i decided to go with a three quarter inch instead of a one inch i just felt that it looked a little bit better with this size and this color than going with one inch but it's totally up to you to use whatever size is best so then we grab it right there and just like that we twist it into the hole and bam it's done so once we've gotten to this step right here that we've put the pvc inside we are technically done this is the finished product and this is how it looks like the next step would be optional to apply cellophane on top of it and put a bow on the bottom it just dresses it up really nice that's how i did all my other lollipops but this one i'm going to do a little bit different i bought colored ping pong balls and i have a lot of them i'm going to place them strategically throughout the lollipop to make it look like some type of sugar sprinkle on it something different and then i'll probably wrap it with cellophane and put a bow on it but it's totally up to you it's optional but this here is how it should look like some people like to wrap the pvc pipe with some tape i have some colored red yellow and other colored tapes that i could wrap around it but all of my lollipops are just white uh like this with this pvc and we're ready so let me show you how i'm going to do the next step okay so i got this bag of 60 ping pong balls from amazon they're so awesome so i've just placed them randomly really where they where they fell is where i'm keeping them and i'm trying to make it look like it has sprinkles on it i think it's looking really awesome so now i'm going to get my glue gun and each individual one i'm going to put glue on the bottom and then stick like that and you don't have to do this but i just thought it would make it look that much more special all my other lollipops are without this so this is just something extra i'm doing for those who want to just spice it up just a little bit but it's totally up to you so i'm just going to stick them real quick with hot glue and we'll be done with that okay so over here i have unfurled cellophane right here this one's almost 40 inches wide and what i'm doing is i put some underneath it and i'm putting some on top just like this so this this is completely optional but i think it elevates it just a little bit i'm going to leave about 8 to 10 inches on the bottom over here i'll cut it right there on the bottom then i'm going to bend this cellophane backwards and attach it with some clear boxing tape or gorilla glue clear duct tape or you could wrap it like this on the side and then stick it with some tape like that either way is fine but once we're done with that we can attach a bow right here to bring it all together a burlap bow a red bow whatever you want to do you can attach it right here so that it holds it in place and it looks really really nicely so let me show you how i'm going to do this so this is how it should look like once it's done look at this and if you see the back we need just a little bit more tape here maybe some more tape over here maybe a little bit of tape right there but that's it it's done i used a pipe cleaner that i had just to hold it for right now but you could use twine you could use a little bit of rope just to hold it in place and then i found this bow and it's going to go attached like that you could use any type of bow you could put anything you want it's up to you but it just came out so awesome a second note the cellophane also acts as a weather proofer so hot glue does not like rain and if it gets wet it sometimes detaches and it loses its adhesive so this essentially protects the lollipop when it does rain and it is cold it will condense on the inside so oftentimes after a good rain or maybe even some snow you'll see condensation on the inside that is normal as soon as the sun comes out it'll be gone in a couple hours so don't worry if you see that happening to yours but look at this how awesome last thing also the pvc pipe i went three almost three pool noodles deep but you still want to make sure that it doesn't fall out or anything so you could use some hot glue as soon as you put the rod inside or you could use a little bit of expanding foam it's a great adhesive as well just to make sure that it doesn't topple over mine doesn't have any glue or foam on it and it's pretty sturdy i think so let's put it out in the decorations this has been so exciting