Pinecone People for Christmas.

Its a cute Christmas Decoration!

One day, we went on a trip to a nearby town & Smiley spotted some Pine cones that he called 'spikeycones', He happily played with them & asked if we could take one to put eyes on it (after the story stones & his pet rock he asks if we can put eyes on everything) So i stashed a few in my bag for play and craft.
The things mothers do! I am sure the lady at the supermarket later that day thought i was quiet strange when i pulled out 3 pine cones in order to find my wallet.


Eventually I came up with this Christmas decoration idea and thought they would be excellent gifts for Smiley to give to family or to decorate our home for the Christmas season. We tried to use some different techniques while making this as well. . .


So here go,
What you need;  Pine cones, 2 pom poms, 2 craft eyes, 1 pipe cleaner, paint & glitter glue, glue, felt, scissors, a stapler, another pom pom & some time.


We did this in steps as it took a while to dry, ill tell you the way we did it but now that it is done I would have done the eyes last. So you might want to swap the eyes til last but seen as this just came to me as we were making it I worked backwards.


Step 1:  Eyes & arms,  2 pom-poms & a cut pipe cleaner, I got smiley to choose a colour & put glue on 2 pom poms, then asked him to wedge the eyes into the pine cone next to each other. then I put the glue on the craft eyes and got him to put these on top of the pom poms. Cut a pipe cleaner in half and put glue on one side of both halves, entirely, I actually put the tip of the pipe cleaner into the glues tip so that it was covered in glue & got Smiley to insert the arms into the body. Make sure the glue has contact & will set.
drying time.







Step 2: Paint. This is a little different. In order to get some fine motor practise in and let smiley practise manipulating a knife I gave him a small old baby knife that i had. He is so keen to use a knife but is yet to master the skill & the baby safe ones really don't do anything but frustrate him as they don't cut through even the softest of foods, they are a little too safe that they are not functional at all so for him to practice holding & handling a knife with no pressure & no frustration I asked him to use it to "cut" the white paint & feed it to the pine cone, whipping it inside the pine cone section.
Drying time.







Step 3: Hats and boots.
Using felt I cut out a heart shape felt piece that the pine cone will glue onto as feet and I also made a hat from felt by cutting it & rolling it into a cone, I stapled the hat and asked smiley to glue another pom pom on top of the Santa hat and due to the nature of felt I clipped the pom poms on for the drying process so they didn't spring off. If you wanted to go one step further you could sew the hat instead of stapling it :-P




Step 4:
Dust on the glitter glue. Smiley dipped a duster in the glitter glue and dusted the pine cone person with gold glitter glue, just to give it a christmas feel. The idea of the first white paint is to get in to the middle of the pine cone and this step is more to frame the surface with glitter. To "dust" it with glitter so to speak.
drying time.







Step 5: Glue the hat & feet.
I put glue on the tip of the Pine cones head & inside the hat and asked smiley to glue the hat on, then put glue on the felt feet and asked him to place the person on top. Press them on firmly. Then we let it set.

There we have a cute Christmas Pine cone Person Decoration.