Hello again! I know I have been a little absent for the last couple weeks. We have been busy around here and life has gotten a little hectic! We had been preparing for an Eagle Court of Honor for our #2 boy, but we actually got a blizzard on the day we were supposed to have it. Who would have thought we would have to worry about snow in the middle of April! Oh well, what do you do? The court of honor got rescheduled for May and I am excited to share some of the details from it with you soon, but for today I am going to share a tutorial for this DIY sugar mold!  Isn’t it great?!

You may recognize this DIY sugar mold from my Easter tablescape where I first used it. Today you can find sugar molds being used in home decor but back in the days before there was granulated sugar you could easily buy at the store, they had a different purpose. Raw sugar cane syrup was poured into the cone shaped depressions in the block of wood and sold to consumers in the cone shape. The consumer would then be able to chip off sugar when they needed to use it.

Evidently sugar molds are still used for their original purpose in parts of Mexico so you can find Mexican sugar molds online (here and here) if you are not interested in making one. But where is the fun in that? 😉 The second link goes to Decor Steals where they have a couple items for sale each day so if the sugar mold is not up for sale that day, just wait a while and it will be back!

I also have to add that I will be getting 3 different sized DIY sugar molds from one piece of wood for less than the price of buying one 12 hole sugar mold after shipping is included. Not too shabby! Of course, we already had most of the tools on hand so that helps in the cost savings. As far as other costs, I believe the big honkin’ piece of wood we bought (as you will see below) was around $31.

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself. Thank you for supporting my blog!

For this project you will need:

• 6″ x 6″ piece of wood
• A saw – for the most part we used a table saw and a circular saw, but you could also use a band saw or even a hand saw
• 2 ⅜” Forstner Bit or Hole Saw
• Tape Measure
• Router (optional)
• Sander – a belt sander or orbital sander or even a sanding block will work
• Sandpaper – 100 grit and 220 grit
• Breathing Mask (if using treated wood)
• Safety Glasses

While this tool list may look extensive, it is really not. We are just trying to give options. The more tools you already have the easier and less expensive this project is. I am going to hand this tutorial over to Mr. Wonderful as he was the one who built the DIY sugar mold. I could give you some directions but they wouldn’t be very helpful. 😉

Hey there everyone. Mr. W back with you on another project commissioned by Kimberly. She had been eyeing something called a sugar mold for some time, and I knew it was in my future. That’s OK as this is quite an easy project as you’ll see in the steps that follow. I hope you get inspired to make one yourself.

The first item to consider was the size that it would be. We had discussed that if Kimberly wanted to match measurements of ones she’d seen before then it would be better to not glue wood together as you would see a seam down the middle of the sugar mold. Rather, we would get a larger piece of wood to start with.

It was off to the lumberyard to see what was available. We wound up getting a 6” x 6” brown-treated post that you might use for a deck. We thought that would be easy to work with and to finish just the way she’d envisioned. Treated lumber comes with some precautions. A few that stood out to us are not to use the wood for anything food related and to use a mask when cutting and sanding. We thought it would not be a problem for this project to use the treated lumber. Use your own judgement on whether you think it is appropriate after speaking with your local lumber yard. Also just to let you know, there was an option for untreated 6” x 6” lumber that we could have ordered, but it was going to take longer and we did not want to wait.

The actual measurements of this 6” x 6” piece of lumber are 5 ½” x 5 ½” x 8’. That was going to work well with the dimensions we wanted for the finished product. Also, the length makes it so she can get one large and two smaller sugar molds. Is this turning into a great situation for her or what? 🙂

To get started I cut the wood down to a 40” length. I took to this task with a pass on each of the four sides using my circular saw. This cut can be done with a variety of saws including a simple hand saw. In fact, I did have to finish with the hand saw as the cut was too deep for my circular saw.

Since the height of the wood was good at 5 ½“, the next step was to cut it down to the final width of 3 ¾” using the table saw. Again, you could also use a band saw or even a hand saw, following some guidelines. I cut along the length of the piece from both the bottom and top to cut through the wood fully.

Next I set the table saw to cut the taper at 17°. Again, I had to cut from both bottom and top due to the depth of the cut needing to be made. I found it easier to cut the taper from the bottom first, and then from the top. With the tapers cut into both sides, the sugar mold was really beginning to take shape.

Now the only thing left before doing finish work were the holes, but how many and how far apart. Luckily figuring that out was as easy as cutting paper 2 ⅜“ circles and placing them in different layouts until we got what we wanted. As you can see, we left a little bit of extra material at the ends as compared to spacing between the holes. We’ll call that our ‘indent’. To figure out the spacing I first measured the distance between the indent marks (38 ¼”). I then subtracted the sum total of the holes (2 ⅜” x 12 = 28.5), and divided by that number (9.75) by one less than the number of holes that I would be making (11). I came up with spacing of .8863”. Being that ⅞” is .875″ I figured I would round up and make my spacing ⅞”.

I measured to the center lengthwise and placed a mark. Then I measured out holes and spacing from the center to each end. I consulted with Kimberly about the subtle ‘indent’ change, and she was happy so I began drilling holes. For ease, we decided not to make our holes cone shaped like the original sugar molds. For the purposes she is going to use it for, Kimberly thought a straight hole would work fine.

I borrowed a 2 ⅜” forstner bit from a friend to drill each of the holes. I used this bit on my drill press using a slower speed. Because this was treated wood that was stored out in the lumber yard, the wood was more wet than what I am used to using. This caused the bit to not drill well after a couple holes. As you can see on a couple of the middle holes, the edges are a little “chewed up”. I ended up switching to using a hole saw and drill for much easier results.

While a forstner bit will make a hole with a very clean bottom, you can easily break out the wood after using the hole saw then chip, sand or scrape the bottom of the hole to get it as smooth as you need. However, I did go back to the forstner bit to finish the bottom of each hole. Each hole is 1 ½” deep.

As an optional step, I thought a chamfer (angled edge) at the top of each of the holes would look nice and would help to smooth out some of the rough holes. I used a router to do this. Optionally, you could sand or chisel this detail as well. After creating the chamfer, I moved to sanding the piece smooth with 100 and then 220 grit sandpaper. I also rounded some of the corners to give the piece more of a worn look. I always enjoy this part as you can get creative with your sanding to create some ‘age’ in the piece.

Once sanding was complete, we tested some different stains to get the color that seemed right and then stained the sugar mold. We may put some matte clear coat on it, but Kimberly was not sure yet so we left it alone. Kimberly has already used it in a couple of different ways. I will part ways with you all now and turn this post back over to her. Thanks for letting me share this project.

Well, what do you think? Easy enough to try? I think with the bonus sugar molds I will be getting out of this, it was definitely worth it. Of course that is easy for me to say though since Mr. W did all the work! Thanks honey! 🙂 I think it turned out awesome and I don’t even mind the center holes being a little marred. It gives the piece character and makes it look more vintage and worn.

After the sugar mold was completed came the fun part of decorating it. As I said earlier, I already used it in my Easter tablescape but now I wanted some decor that would be more neutral that I could use anytime. I found these tealight candle holders at Walmart. I love the look they give when the candles are lit. They form a ring of light around the candle holder. It is a cool effect.

I picked up some succulents at Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately I found out these never go 50% off! Darn! Oh well, they weren’t too expensive and I used a 40% off coupon on one anyway. 🙂 If you are really coupon savvy, you can make multiple trips to pick them up using coupons each time. I was too excited to wait though. Ha!

I love the purple with the soft green of these succulents. They are so pretty and perfect for spring! I can’t wait to find different ways to decorate with this sugar mold and the the smaller ones. There were other candle holders at Walmart that will also work very well and I found some tall vases to hold flowers that will fit into each hole! So many ways to use this sugar mold!

I hope this post inspires you to make a DIY sugar mold for yourself….or better yet, find yourself a Mr. Wonderful to make it for you! But sorry ladies, you can’t have mine, he’s taken! 😉