CraftyCat's January Pinterest Project

Hey, I did pretty well getting this month's Pinterest project completed!  I had bought a new front door Christmas wreath, but after Christmas I realized that I didn't have anything to put on my door for the winter season.  (In past years we would get a real pine wreath for Christmas and then I'd just take the red bow off and leave the greenery up until it didn't look good anymore).

In search of some kind of winter-ish door decoration, off I went to Pinterest.  I quickly found exactly what I was looking for. 

The first inspiration source was from diy inspired.com.  Below is the photo from her blog.

I also found another one I liked that was linked to Etsy.  Here's a picture of that one.

They're slightly different from each other, but the same idea. 

I knew that I had almost all of the materials for this project right there in my craft room.  Yes, I'm the one who moved a large box of pine cones from my old house to my present one, so no shortage of those!  Then I remembered a pine cone project that I did about a year ago. These silvery pine cones would be just the right thing for my door hanging. 

And this is what I came up with.

What I thought would be the most difficult part of creating this was putting the eye hooks into the top of the pine cone.  It was actually pretty easy because I have a sharp metal "pointy stick" that I use for making jewelry.  This stick makes a great starter hole into the pine cone, and then I just screwed in the hooks. You can also try to use a large needle for this step.  If you're using very small hooks, you can use a pair of jewelry pliers to twist them in.

What the top of the pine cones look like.  I used 11/16" eye hooks.  

You can decorate the pine cones or just leave them as is.  One of mine is glittered -- I brushed white glue on the tips of each pine cone segment (or whatever they're called) and sprinkled on fine silver glitter.  Then get some ribbon and loop it through each eye hook.  Make them different lengths. 

I had some straw snowflake look ornaments that I bought a long time ago, knowing that some day I would have a good use for them.  I painted them with white acrylic paint and then gave them a coat of Mod Podge Extreme Glitter.  After tying some narrower ribbon on these, I tied all of the pine cones and snowflakes to a one inch split ring (or a key ring).  A bow made a good finishing touch.

Some final thoughts about this project:  Pine cones can be sharp, so be careful when handling them.  Wear gloves if you have to.  If you have pine cones that you've just picked up, you may want to bake them to get rid of any critters hiding in them.  Instructions on how to do that can be found HERE.  I would also suggest cutting the ribbon pieces first.  This way you can see the different lengths before you attach them to the pine cones.  Allow some extra ribbon for tying to the pine cone and to the ring or whatever you're attaching them to.  Also, you can omit the extra decorations, like my snowflakes, and only use pine cones.  Or just add whatever you think would look with them - jewels, beads, whatever. 

So there you go!  An easy, inexpensive way to brighten up your front door for the dreary, cold winter season.  Any questions about this?  Just ask. 

Thank you for all of your kind comments on past posts.  Keep checking back to my blog for more crafty fun.  It's going to be a great year!  And if you're not yet a follower, please consider becoming one!