Pine Cone Christmas Tree Crafts

How to Create Pine Cone Christmas Trees

My son loves collecting rocks, leaves, and also pine cones. Every year, he comes home from the park with an armload of pine cones and I try to find ways to fit them in my décor. This year, he picked a few large and very pretty pine cones. So, I decided to get crafty and created some miniature pine cone Christmas trees. Here are some ideas for creating your own pine cone Christmas trees.

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Prepping Your Pine Cone Christmas Trees

The first thing you may want to do is check the tops of the pine cones and remove any stems.

Then, set them on a table (top part on the bottom) and check for leaning.

To fix any leaning, remove some of the bottom scales until it is balanced.

I created three different pine cone Christmas trees for this post and gave them all a frosty look using a can of snow spray, like this one, to coat each tree.

You can spray lightly or coat it heavily. This is up to you and how you want your tree to look. I coated mine heavily.

As you decorate your trees take into consideration that you may lose some of your snow coatings due to handling. Let your trees dry for at least 24 hours.

I also purchased a snow roll to recreate a Christmas scene. The snow roll also helps to straighten some “leaning” trees.

As for the other materials, these will be up to you and how you want to dress your trees. So let’s take a look at the three trees I created to help inspire your creativity.

A Glitter Pine Cone Tree

This took less than two minutes to make. While this wasn’t the most beautiful of trees it was fast and easy. It’s a great starter tree, especially for kids.

To make this tree you will need some form of glue spray, like this one, and glitter. I found this ornament filled with glitter and used this to coat the tree.

Before you spray your pine cone, make sure you do so over some newspaper. It can get messy.

After coating the tree with glue spray, immediately sprinkle it with glitter. Voila, the tree is done quickly.

Garland, Lights, and a Star

For this tree, you will need the following:

• Purchase any kind of ribbon or trim that looks like garland. I got the one below from Michaels. Here is one I found on Amazon.

• miniature Christmas lights.

• Silver star charm (you can find these in any jewelry department of most craft stores.)

• And finally, you’ll need a glue gun

First, you will want to wrap the pine cone with lights first. These lights were pretty long so I had to wrap them around the tree a few times.

Next, I removed the loop part of the charm and then glued the star to the top of the tree.

You could also leave the loop part if you’d like to hang your tree. If that’s the case I’d nix the lights.

After, I wrapped the gold/green/red trim. This helped to hide the glue gun blob holding the star in place. This took about 30 minutes to put together. The boys really liked that this tree lit up too.

Pine Cone Tree With Ornaments

This tree took the most time to make. Depending on the size of your pine cone, expect to spend an hour putting everything together. The following items you will need are:

• glue gun
• miniature Christmas balls (I found these inside of this novelty ornament)

To make this tree, I laid a strip of glue (using the glue gun) on the width of each pine cone scale. Then I added two miniature Styrofoam balls to each scale. As you get closer to the top, one ball per scale will do.

Allow the glue to completely dry when done. Then go back and carefully remove those little “hairs or tails” that the glue gun makes as you complete your tree.

Creating a Pine Cone Christmas Tree Scene

I set my pine cone Christmas trees on a piece of wood that I painted white and laid out a layer of snow roll like this one. This helped with some of the trees that had a slight lean as well as hiding the miniature lights switch box.

I also purchased miniature gifts to finish the scene and placed a Happy Holidays wooden sign. I got the sign from Michaels and painted it red.

While I was at Michaels, they had a whole section dedicated to creating miniature Christmas scenes. I wanted to buy them all but that would have been really costly.

Instead, I think I am going to buy one miniature a year and just build up my scene that way. They had things like lampposts, benches, and animals. Again, decorating is all up to you.

Final Thoughts on Creating Your Trees

So, remember to:

• fix leaning pine cones by removing some scales on the bottom
• visit your local crafts stores and check out their see-thru ornaments for miniature ornaments you can use on your trees
• use newspaper, especially when using both the glue spray and frost spray
• if doing this with children, make sure to supervise them when using a glue gun
• and finally, get creative and make a Christmas scene

Well, I hope this post gives you some inspiration for your pine cones. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.

Other Christmas Related Articles

• If you have young kids or grandkids, click here to check out our post on How to Make Christmas Magical for Kids. In it, I have free printables including Polar Express tickets.
• Does the Christmas season have you exhausted with shopping, cooking, and everything else you need to do? Try our Make Merry Christmas planner to get your holiday organized.

Save This for Later

Want to save this for later. Click on the photo below to pin it to your favorite Christmas Pinterest board.

Easy Pine Cone Christmas Tree Projects