Jute & Pinecone Flower Tree

  I love crafting at Christmas time.  I saw the cutest pinecone flowers here and had recently been given a bag of pinecones from a friend who's moving.  Need I say more?  I ended up making a jute and pinecone flower tree.  Isn't it adorable? Here's how I made it:

You will need -

• Styrofoam tree
• Jute Twine
• Pinecones
• Hot glue gun
• Exacto knife (flat straight edge)
• Cardboard
• Gloves (optional)

First, you must wrap the styrofoam tree in jute twine starting at the top with a dab of glue.

 

You should hot glue the twine every now and then as you wrap, keeping it tight and straight. When you get to the bottom of the tree, cut off the excess twine and glue the end of the twine to the base.  Drape an additional piece of twine around the tree as a placement pattern for the pinecone flowers.

To Make the Pinecone Flowers:

Remove the scales (petals) from the pinecones. The easiest way for me was to start at the base of the cone.  Here the first few rows of scales are easily removed with your fingers.  They come off rather quickly. Once you've gotten these off, it's time to conquer the larger ones.

Using a flat edge exacto knife, wedge and push the tip under the scale and twist and lift. The scale should pop off. It takes practice to get the hang of removing the scales but I found this way a lot better than cutting them off.  I tried cutting with heavy duty shears and the wood split on a lot of them.  *Be careful to keep your fingers and hands away from the knife and there are tiny thorns on the tip you should avoid. Gloves might help.

To create the flower, cut quarter size discs out of cardboard. Next glue the larger pinecone scales on the 3,6,9 and 12 positions (clock) of the cardboard disc. Fill in the remaining areas with more scales.  Use the smaller scales to add dimension to the flower.                                   

Hot glue the completed pinecone flower at the top of the jute twine wrapped tree. Follow the draped twine on the tree as you glue the pinecone flowers in place until you reach the end.

 

I added lights for a more festive holiday look:

 

 I also placed the tree among some evergreens  .  .  .

 

Sorry about the blurry photos .  . I think my camera is taking a dive.

Most of all I like the natural and rustic look of the tree with its earthy textures.    Oops . . excuse glue strings.

I'm calling it Rustic Chic!

  

Thanks for stopping by

and take a little time to enjoy,

Happy Holiday Crafting!

               

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

          





                                

What I Made for the Holidays

Hey there, thinking about all the things I did for the holidays, and wanted to have them in print. I enjoyed decorating my new home and perhaps got carried away. I always wanted to make a topiary since the ones available to purchase are extremely expensive. I was pleased how it turned out although it might have been a bit over powering. Basically it's just a styrofoam ball wrapped with lighted white garland I had. I used floral pins to keep it in place. I attached the ball to a tree limb I white washed painted. To secure it to the container, I glued styrofoam to the bottom, put gravel rocks in for weight, inserted the limb and sprayed insulation foam all around to stabilize it. After drying or curing for a day, it was ready to be decorated. I used break resistant ornaments and a small white wreath on the container. I also added lights and ribbon.

As Always,