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One of my favorite hobbies is doing pinecones crafts for Christmas. I have lots of pinecones, of all kinds,picked up from our park. All summer, when I walk my dog, I have a few plastic bags in my pocket - and not only for you know what - for picking up every fresh fallen pinecone, which are clean. I preffer the red cones because they are smaller, easier to handle and cutter, also they're easier to fill all the spaces in between. During the years, I made lots of candle supports and wreaths with red cones, which I offered to our friends, as a Christmas gift. Also, I made a fruit basket, especially for Christmas,which can hold the mandarins.
When I saw the pinecones tree, I loved it and started to think about what I needed to make one. First, I had to figure out what will the pinecones have to stick on….I thought of a stick, one of those which I use for my plants. The pinecones will have to go round the stick and get stuck on it with a special glue…had to figure out about this too ! Next question I had to answer was : where should I put the stick into or better said, what will be the Christmas tree’s foot ? It had to be something nice and shiny, but also thick and strong enough to hold the whole tree. I thought a cartoon tube will be great, one of those from the toilet paper. But this wasn’t enough, it had to have something inside, to hold the stick tight. The expanded polystiren was my first thought, I had a few pieces which I used for making the little presents for my ornaments. Once I have answered these questions, I could start doing the Pinecones Christmas tree…what a thrill!
I first started with a small one, so I used the smallest pinecones I had, red pines. I cut the tube, then measured the expanded polystiren tube form I had to put inside the cartoon tube. I used a well sharped knife, for cutting both the cartoon tube and the polystiren. I made a hole, right in the middle of the polystiren form, for sticking the stick in, with a glue gun. But first, I thought I'd better stick a cartoon circle on top of the tube, on which I’ll stick the first row of pinecones, for a better stability of the tree.The stick had to be glued too, in the hole. A golden paper had to be applied arround the cartoon tube, for a better look. I let the base of the tree get dry and began arranging the pinecones together, not an easy task, I assure you ! They had to be about same size and stuck into each other’s “petals”, with the top to the inside, like shown in the picture. Each cone has to be stuck to each other with glue…better put a little bit more glue, peas grain size. Each cone had to be stuck to the central stick. The lowest row of the tree had to have about 5-6 bigger cones, then going smaller to the top. After all the pinecones were glued to each other and the tree was done, I started to decorate it with red and golden bows, silver small presents and acorn globes, which were stuck between the pinecones.
For a bigger one I used nigra pinecones, which are my favorites .
I have lots of golden coffee bags saved for making golden bows. For the red ones I used a red corrugated paper, which I cut in sheets, then tie it in the middle with a red thread.
With a small circle, cut from the coffee bag in a flower shape, I decorated this red flower and used it for decorating the pinecones basket.
The presents are made of expanded polystiren, folded with a small gift paper and tied with a thin flower ribbon.
I saved some acorns last fall, from the oaks in the park, covered it with aluminium foil and used it as globes .
Wasn't it fun? It took sometime,but it was worth it! I have to tell you, I can hardly wait for each Christmas to decorate my home with these crafts made by my own hand !
You can check out the Plant Files for Red Pines and Nigra Pines.This is one of the Nigra Pines who provided the cones for my Pinecones Christmas Tree.
Subject: Loved your acorn trick too! Subject: Great article
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