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Craft Corner: DIY Pine Cone Flowers

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

By Sarah Hauge, publisher of Macaroni Kid Englewood, Greenwood Village, Centennial, Colo. October 20, 2020

My kids love to collect pine cones 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 pine cone, 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.

DIY Pine Cone Flowers


What You Need:

  • Pine cones
  • Floral wire
  • Hot glue
  • Wire cutters
  • Vase
  • Optional: Paint and embellishments


What You Do:

1. Collect your pine cones. You can use any variety of pine cone 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 pine cone, you'll see that the scales form a rosette. Parents, use wire cutters (or another sturdy cutting tool) to cut the rosette from the pine cone.

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





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

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

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



Want to show us your pine cone flowers? We'd love to see your photos! Be sure to tag @macaronikid on social media to show us how you've worked this seasonal craft into your own home.