Healthy Candy Bracelets

I’m all about simple kids crafts this summer! And these healthy candy bracelets were super easy, and lots of fun! I’ve seen lots of candy bracelets and necklaces, but my kids are soooo addicted to sugar, I wanted to at least TRY to put some healthy ingredients on these. And my girls didn’t know the difference! They were happy as anything wearing (and eating) these bracelets!

I wasn’t sure what ingredients would work well, so I picked up an assortment of dried goods at the bulk store.

Here’s what I found worked the best: Dried apples, candied blueberries, banana chips, dried citrus peel, cheerios, dried cherries and yogurt covered raisins. The banana chips only worked if they had small holes in the center already – otherwise they’d break apart when you poked the needle through them.

The apples came in larger rings, so I cut them down into smaller pieces. We don’t buy these very often, so they might as well have been candy. My kids loved them!

I had some elastic cording left over from when I made edible gumball necklaces last year. I got it at Michael’s and it’s absolutely fantastic for jewellery making… particularly edible jewellery, since really, that’s all I’ve ever used it for!

Use a large needle with a dull tip to poke through everything and then string it down onto the elastic string. I found the candied blueberries and the yogurt covered raisins were the trickiest because small pieces would flake off, but they still worked. And I loved that they resembled beads.

And let’s face it, yogurt covered raisins and candied blueberries pretty much ARE candy, so that was the first thing my kids ate off their bracelets. *sigh* But at least they were eating the apple and banana pieces too.

I threw the cheerios in there for good measure. Cheerios are fantastic for edible jewellery!

I’m not really sure what dried citrus peel is for? Maybe Christmas fruit cakes? My girls weren’t exactly fans of it, but it definitely adds some interesting texture to the bracelets. I’m pretty sure I’ll be eating the rest of those.

Aren’t the bracelets cute? These are the ones I made, so of course I couldn’t help but make them in a pattern. The kids were a little more free with theirs. They had lots of fun picking out their favourite pieces and randomly stringing their own colourful bracelets.

They really enjoyed trying all the new flavours. I’ve got to say, I had no idea that candied blueberries even existed before we did this!

These healthy candy bracelets are such a simple craft for kids. Collect your favourite assortment of dried goods and let them create their own edible jewellery. You might have to help a bit with poking everything through the needle, but they’ll have lots of fun creating patterns, pulling it all onto the string and testing the new flavours. And of course, at the end, they’ll have something beautiful to show off!