Gingerbread Topiary Idear

I had an hour to kill this morning before a meeting I had at the kid's school so naturally, I spent it trolling Hobby Lobby for some ideas on materials to use for xmas decor projects.

I've had my eye on topiaries lately. As I've said, I have a lot of table space to fill this year and I think an assortment of topiaries will really fit the bill.

I found these awesome paper mache tree forms that I'll be going back tomorrow to scoop up

It was 9.99 for the big one and I can't recall the small but if I get then for 40% that's a deal either way! Sure I could do the posterboard method that a lot of blogs you read on these kind of trees employ but buying these will save me time and frustration and these will be much sturdier anyway.

My immediate thought for one of these was a Gingerbread tower. (Most of my holiday decor is gingerbread). I was thinking about how I would accomplish that and so far my thoughts are to paint the whole thing a darker brown and then make all the trim and "candies" from polymer clay. This is going to be my inspiration pretty much

From there I'll hotglue the candies and trim, lacquer it all, and top it with a bow.

I'm sure this project is going to be a pain in the ass and that I could never hope to make two of the same so this'll be for one of the topiaries that I intend on placing on top of my kitchen cabinets.
Of the other two (I plan on three total in that location) I plan on making a sparkly red santa's hat with sparkly poofy white trim and a yarn candy cane patterned one.