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Macaroni Kid Craft: DIY Pinecone Flowers

Kids collecting pinecones? Here's an easy and beautiful craft to use them

By Sarah Hauge, Publisher, Macaroni Kid, Englewood, Greenwood Village, Centennial October 17, 2023

My kids love to collect pinecones from our backyard so we always seem to have a bag full of them on our porch. If you've ever looked closely at a pinecone, you'll notice that they're actually quite beautiful. After years of admiring them in a bag, I decided it was finally time to spotlight them in a fall craft.


Supplies:

  • Pinecones
  • Floral wire
  • Hot glue
  • Wire cutters
  • Vase
  • Optional: paint and embellishments
Directions:

1. Collect your pinecones. You can use any variety of pinecones to create flowers, but we picked ours from a Blue Spruce tree since they are smaller and easier to cut.

2. When you look at the tip of the pinecone, you'll see that the scales form a rosette. Use wire cutters (or another sturdy cutting tool) to cut the rosette from the pinecone.

3. Once the rosette is cut off, you may notice that the next layers naturally form a flower shape as well. Use wire cutters to continue cutting the flower shapes from the pinecone. Depending on the size of the pinecone, you can harvest 1-5 flowers from each one.





4. Optional: Paint your flowers (acrylic paint or spray paint will work). Refer to the photos above to see the difference between natural vs painted flowers. Spoiler alert: both look fantastic!

5. Use hot glue to attach your pinecone flowers to the floral wire stems.

6. Gather your flowers together and display them in a vase.