How-To: Preserve a Candy Portrait

Andrew Salamone follows up his now-famous Nerds portrait with a project for CRAFT on preserving candy portraiture:

Let’s say that you were overzealous with your Halloween candy purchases this year (or maybe trick-or-treater traffic was down in your neighborhood) and now you have a big bag or two of candy that you don’t really want to eat. And then let’s say that there is someone you’ve been meaning to make a sweet portrait of, like, for instance, Abraham Lincoln. Well then boy do I have a project for you.

I was recently asked to make a portrait of Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin out of Nerds candies. In order to make the portrait I had to figure out how to adhere the candy to a panel and protect them from moisture, which would eventually make the candy deteriorate. Then I had a whole bag of Halloween candy that I didn’t particularly want to eat, so I made a portrait of Abraham Lincoln out of it for my apartment. Here is the process I used to adhere and preserve the candy so that you can make your own candy portrait with your left-over or unwanted Halloween candy.