Pine Cones & Twine Cones

Earlier this week I did a quick post about some of my DIY pink & gold christmas decor. Though it's certainly not rocket science I wanted to do a follow up post on how I did it (and where I got my inspiration from) for those of you that might be interested.

Like I said before I live in a small apartment. And while some may find decorating a small apartment challenging, I find it gives me the opportunity to, on occasion, be extra creative and to think outside of the box. Because I don't want my space to feel cramped and crowded - and I just don't have that much space to begin with, I've decided for my holiday decor I'll be sticking to a few, but hopefully impactful, vignettes around the apartment. (I'm still debating a tree...)

The first projects I began working on were glittery pine cones and, what I've named, twine cones. I was at West Elm and loved the simplicity of the limited-edition holiday collection created by David Spark but was not in-love with the prices. So I decided to DIY them.

First up glittery pine cones (I swear I took pics as I was doing them but can't seem to find them). It's super easy. All you need are glitter, pine cones, glue, and newspaper. I bought a huge shaker of gold glitter  at Walmart for $2.95 and picked up a coordinating 3-pack of pink glitter from the Martha Stewart line (again at Walmart) for, I think, $7. I was tempted to go for plain white glue because it was cheaper but I'm so happy I went for spray glue (I think $6 Walmart). Using spray glue made the entire project super fast whereas I imagine brushing on white glue would be a bit more time consuming (but doable none-the-less). I used the newspaper to catch the falling glitter and pour it back into the shaker (no waste here!). Then all you do is spray - shake on glitter - gently tap the pine cone so the excess to fall off and then put it aside to dry. That's it. It's so easy and I think the way the sunlight catches it and makes it seemingly shimmer is so pretty. The pine cones I've done are large ones I bought ages ago on sale for about $5 (for about 10) but I plan on doing some small ones too and piling them into a shallow bowl on my coffee table. (TIP: You can simply collect small pine cones from outside but shake them out well to get all of the small creepy crawlies out of them. Or you can just buy pine cones. I saw some at the dollar store.)

Next up twine cones. I love the sculptural quality of them. All you need are cone forms (I used cardboard ones from the craft store but I think you could use styrofoam), twine or yarn (dollar store) and a glue gun. Start at the base and just wrap & glue, wrap & glue, wrap & glue......and that's it.

I did the first 2 with twine and then got the idea to use yarn for the last one. I must admit the twine was a bit easier to work with since the glue string blended in with the twine whereas I had to be a bit neater when using the yarn. Either way they are both TOTALLY easy to do. I'm on the hunt for some taller cone forms and will then group them on my newly purchased dining table as another vignette...and perhaps add a gold star (made of pipe cleaner) to the top for a more festive look.

I did both of these projects while watching TV so really - they couldn't be any easier.