Pine Cone Ornaments Crafts
Making pine cone ornaments are a fun and inexpensive craft project, and make great decorations for you tree. It is easy to transform a simple pine cone into a great looking ornament or decoration with a few additions. Here are a few ideas on what you can use for your ornament:
- garland
- ribbon
- cinnamon sticks
- paint
- glitter
- potpourri
- red berries
- greenery
- bells
- twigs
- or anything else you have in mind
Before you get started you might want to prepare your pine cones. If you have gathered your pine cones from outside it is a good idea to clean them up. You can put your pine cones in the oven to kill any bugs that may be in them and to help melt the sap, which will give them a glazed look. Putting them in the oven will also open up any pine cones that are closed. When baking your pine cones use a layer of tinfoil over your cookie sheet to help protect it. Then put them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 20 to 30 minutes. You can also clean them by soaking them in soapy water or water with a cup of bleach for 30 minutes and then rinse them off. This will also kill any bugs that are hiding out and will help remove the sap.
After preparing your pine cones, the next step is to paint anything that you would like to. If you are painting multiple pine cones, spray paint works great. Pine cones also look nice when just their tips are sponge painted lightly. When painting the whole cone, be careful not to load the pine cone with too much paint, you don’t want your ornament to end up looking lumpy in certain areas.
After your paint is dry, tie a ribbon or ornament hook onto the top of the pine cone. To help secure your ribbon or hook use a drop of glue, a hot glue gun works well. Then figure out how you would like to arrange anything else you would like to add, and use the hot glue gun to hold everything in place. If you are working with kids, I would skip the hot glue gun and use other craft glue or make sure you do all the gluing.
