Microphone Cake Balls-You Rock!

This is a (kinda messy) microphone cakeball...on a stick.

I had to say that b/c I'm not sure it's totally obvious what it is supposed to be.
It's something I'll try again in about a week, for a choir party. I hope to make some improvements, but I like the idea. It's not mine.
These are the lessons I learned, and if you want to make a microphone cakeball (because I'm SURE they are in high demand), you can learn from all the things I shouldn't have done. Or at least feel my pain in a project gone a little wrong. Advice welcome.
Here goes....
So, our choir teacher at school had a program a week or so back. The theme was old 'rock songs.' I was thinking about how hard she works, and how too often I forget to say how much I appreciate hard workers surrounding me in my world of school. I wanted to do something for her. In the meantime, I bought this book:
What's New, Cupcake?

They are the same people that wrote Hello, Cupcake...only my very favorite cookbook related anything of all times. Click on the cake links on my blog and you'll see I'm a tad fanatical. This book doesn't disappoint.
I saw this picture of a microphone inside.

They use donuts for the top, and mini ice cream cones for the bottom. They then ice the donut, and cover those with silver ball sprinkles.
I thought....michophones...an oldies 'rock out' concert...Missy (our choir teacher), "You Rock!"
I then went on the hunt for mini ice cream cones, and I knew I'd be using cake balls instead of donuts. I also wanted to put them on sticks and make them into a microphone bouquet instead of a cupcake topper. I hunted. I complained. I hunted. I made phone calls. I google searched. I was given 20 free waffle cones at Central Markets (don't ask, who knows what I'll do with those) in the midst of the hunt. And when I gave up the night before the concert (when I wanted to slip this to our choir teacher as a thank you), I thought....hey....
I can buy the 'regular size' and cut them down to mini. It was so easy, and it worked great. I just used a steak knife and carefully sawed.

Then, I took the edge of my knife, and gently poked a hole in the bottom of the cone towards the middle. I slipped the stick through, and placed the cake ball on top. I pushed the stick all the way to the top of the cake ball.

Next time I would probably go ahead and dip the bottom half of the ball in chocolate to help it adhere to the cone. When I later dipped it in chocolate I tried to submerge is far enough to overlap the top of the cone, but I think it would have stuck even better with this extra step of dipping the bottom too. I would have also placed these in the freezer to harden a little bit before dipping the top in chocolate, so things weren't so wiggly.
Ready for dippin'

Next, I melted a small bowl of chocolate in the microwave, dipped the balls (already on the cone), and then added sprinkles.
These are the sprinkles I bought.

They are silver. I ended up using about half the jar on just 5 pops, but that's my lack of skills with sprinkles, and melted chocolate. I should have sprinkled over them, and not dipped them in sprinkles. It got a little messy (note chocolate smears on the cones). In the book, they used those silver metallic balls, but they aren't edible. I'm all about something being 100% edible.
I took a soup can, a black piece of paper, glitter, and glue, and made a flashy little wrap for the can. I could have jazzed it up a little more. I didn't. I inserted a piece of foam, which left me with no more foam, which brings us to the next step....
Drying

Let me pause for a minute and say I put this little bouquet together on Earth Day. Sure, I could say the reason I had to rest my cake pops in empty (clean) soda cans is because I don't actually keep Styrofoam for these sort of 'drying' escapades, but I'm going to tell you the reason I used cans was because I wanted to save the planet. After the pops dried in their 'eco-friendly' drying racks, I then recycled the cans. The earth smiled.
Chilled, and ready to wrap.

I then finished the bouquet after I put the cake ball microphones in cellophane, with silver ribbon ties. I needed to rearrange heights before delivering, but you get the idea. The idea is all I needed to get across.

For the record. I turned to another one of the pages and I saw these little cherry pie cupcakes, and I was so excited b/c I did this last Thanksgiving with one of my sugar cookies before this book was in print (I also made some cookies I saw, and sited from thedecoratedcookie that same Thanksgiving if you visit the link. I love sugar cookie fun). I just needed to say this b/c it feels good to have ideas align with people you admire before you KNOW about their thoughts. It made me feel clever for about three seconds. I'm over it. Theirs are about four million times cuter, and I'm fine with that too. Leave the super duper triple scooper cute to the experts. I'm just a girl with a blog, and a camera, mediocre photography skills, bad lighting, a shaky hand, three undisciplined dogs, and a quest for imperfection. Mission accomplished.

P.s. I went to a second Walmart the day after I delivered these, and there sat my 'mini' kid's cones in the freezer section....c'est la vie, and I'm OK with it!
P.p.s. The whole choir is getting a load of microphones next week. My opportunity for redeptions. Wait-redemption or purgatory, the lines seem suddenly skewed!?!?