St. Patrick's Day Hershey's Kisses
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Jo and I were talking about Hershey's Kisses the other day and wondering why they don't come in green foil around St. Patrick's Day. This seemed like even more of a travesty when we realized that those little kisses would go so well with the most common St. Patrick's Day phrase there is — "Kiss me, I'm Irish". And with that, inspiration was born, and I decided to make my own.
The first thing I did was design some tags. You can download our free "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" tags and labels to create and decorate your St. Patrick's Day Hershey's Kisses.
The most important part of a Hershey's Kiss is the little paper flag, so let's make our own with the phrase "Kiss me, I'm Irish" printed right on it. To be authentic, we want to use tissue paper, just like the original Kisses flags. But since tissue paper is too thin to put in the printer, I had to come up with a clever method for printing on tissue paper.
To start, cut a piece of tissue paper to around 12" x 15" and put a piece of regular 8.5" x 11" copy paper on it.
Then start folding over the edges and taping them down, wrapping the tissue around the back of the paper.
When you get to the corners, be sure to fold the tip under and tape it down so that the edges of the paper are nice and smooth. Otherwise, they might get caught up in the printer, and nobody wants that.
Make sure you tape down all the edges so that it's smooth.
Flip it over and now you've got a perfect sheet of tissue paper that's ready for the printer!
Then print the flags from our template right onto your new sheet of tissue.
Now for the only part of this project that is kind of annoying — you've got to cut out all those little flags. I found it easiest to cut the tissue while it was still taped to the paper, because it kept it stable so it didn't fly around all over the place. I also found that a paper trimmer didn't work well, but just shredded the tissue, so you're going to have to do this by hand with scissors.
It'll be worth it, though, because just look at those adorable little flags!
Next up, you need some green foil candy wrappers.
The ideal size you want is 2.5" x 2.5", since that's how big the original Kiss wrappers are. If your wrappers are too big (like mine were), just made a little cardboard template and use that as a guide to cut them down to size.
Now for the fun part - wrapping the candy! Start by putting one piece of foil, green side down, on the table. Add one of your flags so that it's half inside the foil and half out. Then place an unwrapped Kiss in the center of the foil, on the end of the flag.
Then just wrap the foil up around the candy and press it firmly around the contours of the Kiss.
Aren't they adorable? Oh, just imagine the possibilities of custom Hershey's Kisses!
These St. Patrick's Day kisses are pretty awesome as they are, but to take them over the top, I decided to package them up so that I could give them as gifts. I came up with some fun ways to package them, and I decorated them using the tags and labels from our free "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" printables!
Packaging Hershey's Kisses in a favor bag
The first is a pretty common solution, a little plastic favor bag. Just print the bag tags from our template onto white cardstock, cut the toppers out, and fold them down the middle.
They are sized to work perfectly with 3-3/4" clear treat bags, but you could also use 4" wide bags if that's what you have. Add about a dozen kisses to the bag, fold the top over an inch or so, and slide the printed cardstock topper over the fold.
Secure the topper on both sides with a staple, and you're all set.
Packaging Hershey's Kisses in a tube
My other packaging idea comes from a rather unexpected source — quarter size plastic coin tube.
These tubes just so happen to perfectly hold three Hershey's Kisses. If you want to make a lot of these favors, you may want to look at buying the quarter tubes in bulk.
These little tubes need some decoration, though, and you can use our labels to do this a couple ways. When printed onto sticker paper, the rectangular labels from our our template can quickly and easily be added to the sides of the tubes.
If you don't like stickers, you can add a hanging tag to the tube. Just print the tags from our template onto white cardstock and cut them out. Then punch a hole in the end of each one, right in the middle of the shamrock.
Then use some coordinating ribbon to tie the tags onto the tubes. So cute!
If you're looking for a fun way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with your friends or an easy and unique favor for your kids to share with your classmates, I hope you'll give these St. Patrick's Day kisses a try. They're so cute I almost don't want to eat them!
25 comments so far:
These are so cute! Even though I'm Polish, I'll have to make some of these up for my granddaughters. I know they'll love them!
I am going to make these. They are adorable! Great Idea!
I love these. Would be awesome for custom wedding color favors, too. I know customized M&Ms are popular, but they are far too expensive. You ladies are super smart.
I went to check on Amazon, and I found that they DO sell Hershey's Kisses wrapped in green foil! But they don't have your awesome customized "Kiss me, I'm Irish" tag! I'm using your cute printables to wrap these green kisses up -- thanks so much!
Susan, all is fair when it comes to candy!
Melissa, thanks!
Becca, I was thinking the same thing for customizing kisses for weddings or even baby showers. Perhaps in the future we'll have some downloadable templates for other flags :)
Cathy, good find! I guess you can buy Christmas colors year round on Amazon, because they do have quite a few types of Kisses in green foil. This is a good way to speed up this project if you want to leave the flags out and let the labels do the talking.
Oh so cute!
Thank you for such a great idea! I am such a big fan of your website and just love looking for new ideas. You both have been such an inspiration to me!
Thanks so much, Crystal. Inspiring you guys to be crafty is exactly our goal, so it makes us so happy to hear when we've succeeded.
Too cute! Love this idea!
This is a great idea & an even better tutorial!!!
I would have never thought to use coin holders as candy holders :) Brilliant!!
Staci, we thought the coin holders were a pretty clever solution. We were brainstorming tubes and similar containers and stumbled upon these, and they were perfect! I'm sort of addicted to them now, and I keep thinking of all sorts of things to use them for.
Cute idea! I think I want to try it on one of those giant chocolate kisses.
Very smart figuring out how to do this! I'm surprised Hershey's hasn't jumped on this idea - such a cute idea! Thanks for sharing!
This is cute idea for teachers. Alot pf PTA/PTO's make care packages up for teachers at the beginning of the school year and to make these customeized to your school would be neat. I will keep it in mind for fall!
Hershey does make a green chocolate kiss, I bought some last year at Target, they are dark chocolate variety.
Jackie, we've spotted them a time or two, but never can seem to find them when we need them. If you buy green wrapped kisses, it certainly saves you a lot of time, although then you won't get to add the cute little custom flags! :)
What size sticker sheets did you use? Your link (above) doesn't bring me to sticker sheets.
Maggie, we used 8.5" x 11" sticker paper. Thanks for the comment about the link... we've corrected it!
I am looking for a place to buy small coldrins to use for "pot of gold" to hold 2-3 Hershey kisses or 3-4 gold choc coins
Carol, check out your local party store. They ought to have small plastic cauldrons on hand for St. Patrick's Day.
What about using parchment paper in the printer. It shud be stiff enough. Lov the kisses. My daugh. Ws brn on st. Paddys day.
Lenamae, I have never tried to print on parchment paper, so I don't know if the ink will absorb into it or not. I'm also not sure if it will be thin enough to mimic the classic tissue flag on a Hershey's Kiss. If you try it out, let us know how it goes!
I just love the Irish Kisses! What a well thought out idea, my friend.
Irish by blood and at heart,
Linda Glass Dunagan
I buy the Christmas Hershey kisses; after Christmas at half price. Then I divide the red and silver for Valentines Day and save the green for St. Patty's Day... of course it doesn't have the cute Irish slip of paper you made... but for lazy people... mine works!
Smart thinking, Cathy. I'd have to hide a stash like that pretty well or else My Honey would eat them all before the holidays came around!