How to Make a Candy Dispenser

After the Easter week-end my daughter asked me to build a dispenser for her Easter eggs. This was the opportunity for a fun week-end project.

This is a very simple project which requires very little material. To build your candy dispenser all you need is:

- A small cardboard box

- A small jar

- An empty soda bottle

- About 4 ice lolly sticks

- And some spare cardboard

In terms of tools you will need a sharp exacto knife and some glue.

In this instructables I won’t provide any measurements because it’s all relative to the cardboard box you choose for this project.

The first step is straight forward. We just need to prepare the outside parts of the candy dispenser.

Take the cardboard box and cut a circle the size of the jar at the top of the box. Then gently screw in the jar.

Now let’s make the inside of the dispenser. We need to build a mechanism to get the candies from the jar into a collection point. This mean building a small trap door to regulate the flow of candies.

From the spare cardboard, cut two squares the size of our box and at the centre cut a hole the size of your favourite candies.

Cut the top of the soda bottle to create a small funnel and glue it to one of the square.

Flip that panel upside down and on the other side glue some ice lolly sticks. The most important pieces are the two on the front. They will act as guides for the trap door so they are spaced to precisely fit the size of the trap, which in our case will be the size of two ice lolly sticks.

The rest of the sticks are placed randomly to give some strength to the panel.

Now you need to figure out where to position the mechanism inside the dispenser and where to cut the hole for the trap door.

Take the panel with the soda bottle and place it inside the box, just under the jar. View from the top, the soda bottle should be just under the jar. View from the bottom you should see the ice lolly sticks.

With a pencil mark the location where you will insert the trap door. Remove the panel and cut to hole for the trap. If you reposition the panel the light should get through precisely where the trap door will come in.

You can now close the mechanism by gluing the second panel. Reposition the mechanism inside the dispenser and apply a generous dose of glue to keep it in place.

To make the trap door, simply glue two ice lolly sticks together and slide them in. Tip: to give more strength to the trap door, glue the two sticks on a piece of paper.

The final step is to make a small draw to collect the candies at the base of the dispenser. The size depends on the box you choose for this project.

Cut a hole at the base of the box. Measure it and use the spare cardboard to build a small draw.

We used a piece of ice lolly sticks to make a small handle.

Place the draw in the box and voila!

Your candy dispenser is ready. You can choose to decorate it the way you like, but we left it as is … we had some candies to eat first!