I may or may not be guilty of gathering large pine cones out of the side yard of a business in North Carolina one day.
And I may or may not have influenced my husband so much with my obsession of collecting any and all sizes of pine cones that he has started to stuff his pockets with them when he is walking our dog around the neighborhood.
The neighbors haven’t said anything yet.
Obviously I love the look of pine cones for crafts, Christmas ornaments, and especially wreaths. They have inspired a few of the projects I have shared on my blog over the years. With the suspiciously taken large pines cones previously hinted at, I pulled them together to make a Fall Orange Glitter Door Swag that was so easy to make.
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As I mentioned before, I have created several Fall craft projects mostly from using the small pine cones from my own yard.
Side note here: Speaking of small pine cones, I know there are many many species of pine trees and one day I might take the time to learn more about that. But the pine trees in my yard seem to be several hundred feet high and they produce these itty bitty little pine cones. In my home town in NC, some of the trees are so much shorter but the pine cones are huge! You just got to love nature!
Anyway, on the blog you can find posts for a Fall Floral Arrangement with Painted Pine Cones, another one for Citrus Scented Pine Cones, fun little Candy Corn Painted Pine Cones, and a very popular post where I made a Sunflower Painted Pine Cones Wreath.
For this project I had really intended to buy gold glitter spray paint for a Christmas Gold Pine Cone Door Swag. However, on a trip to a brand new Joanns store in Knoxville, my daughter and I could only find Krylon’s Glitter Blast Spray Paint in Orange on the shelves. So my planned project became a Fall Pine Cone Door Swag instead.
Since I had collected these pine cones from nature I had to take time to wash and then bake the pine cones to kill off any insects and bug eggs inside.
This is easy to do by soaking the pine cones in warm water for about 15 minutes, then putting them on a baking sheet with a layer of wax or parchment paper underneath them. Heat the oven to just 200 degrees Fahrenheit and bake the pine cones for about 45 minutes, flip them over, and bake another 45 minutes.
The warm water usually makes the pine cones close back up and if the baking process doesn’t make them open up fully again, you may just have to let them naturally open up over a few days before applying any spray paint.
Purchasing pretreated pine cones is an excellent way to turn this project into an easy 30 minutes or less project. Which is always a good idea. And that advice is coming from someone who can’t resist picking up free ones on the side of the road and who then has to take a couple of days to treat them.
Normally when I share a craft project, I show you every little step along the way. Well somehow I forgot to take pictures of the spray painting process with the glitter paint – but I am sure you get the idea. After the glitter paint had dried, I decided to spray the pine cones with Minwax Polycrylic spray to seal in the glitter a bit more. This was a good idea because I didn’t end up with orange glitter fingers while working with the pine cones.
For the next step of this door swag project, you will need a roll of jute twine, wired burlap ribbon, and a dark colored pipe cleaner.
I staged the look of the door swag first by placing the pine cones, largest at the bottom, to smallest at the top on the table.
Then I cut a length of jute twine at 24 inches for each pine cone.
The beauty of working with pine cones in a swag is that you can easily slide the twine through the scales of the pine cone and tie it off to hang it. I made sure to cut the tied ends off and to stuff the twine into the scales as much as possible.
Once all of the pine cones were tied off with twine, lay them out again in the pattern you want them to hang in and gather up all of the lengths of the twine together and tie them in a knot.
The pine cones I used were heavy so instead of creating a loop with the twine to hang the swag, I twisted a short piece of brown pipe cleaner around the twine knot to make a looped hanger.
A simple burlap bow is then added to the top to complete this simple orange glitter pine cone door swag. For your own version, you can add a different type of bow, or even berries or floral stems.
In the photos above you probably saw that I had also spray painted some of the small pine cones picked up in my own yard. I put those in a footed wooden tray with some little wood stumps from Dollar Tree and natural wood beads as a Fall display next to a stack of pumpkins. Early Fall decorating has officially begun in my home.
If you are like me and can’t resist the beauty of a natural pine cone, then this is a wonderful way to decorate with them in your home. Even without the glitter spray paint these would make such a simple and classic Fall decoration.
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Hugs,
Matthew 7:8 “For everyone who ask receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
I love the fact that so many different sizes and shapes of pinecones are available. I’ve not idea which trees product which but I love that they differ, makes them perfect for crafting, right?
This paint is just the right amount of “bling” for this swag, it looks lovely.
Thanks Julie
Your swag is just lovely! I really enjoy collecting and decorating with pinecones too but we struggle to find larger ones up here as well since many of ours are really tiny.
Thanks Joanne. The ones in my yard are small too so when I can find larger ones laying around it is hard to resist picking them up.