pine cone fairies
this year we are taking part in the annual crafty crow ornament swap! the theme for the year is fairy tales… you know, kings, queens, princesses, gnomes, dragons. but they had me at fairy. always do.
fairies hanging out in our tree
so N and i went hunting in our backyard for some natural materials to make fairy ornaments out of. we found tons of tiny pine cones.
thank you, trees
we baked the pinecones at 250 degrees for about an hour, to make sure the critters were gone and because the sappy stuff in the cones gives them a nice shiny glow after baking. the house smelled divine! (that’s the closest we’ll come to the real christmas tree smell in our home, as we have cats.)
then we decided to apply a bit of gold paint to the pinecones to make them sparkle, all fairy-like. these cones were going to be fairy bodies!
gilded
with some wood glue, we attached unfinished wooden beads to the tops, to serve as fairy heads. then i hot-glued (hot glue guns and toddlers do not mix) a golden thread and paper flower to the top of each, so the fairies had flower hats and a string from which to hang.after that, we used one of my most favorite art materials ever — garlic peels! (and a coupla red pearl onion peels, too) these make the perfect ethereal fairy wings when hot-glued to the back of the pinecone.
then we had a big fairy family to share with the ornament swap recipients!
we put each safely into a small empty crayon box and wrapped them with coloring book pictures of fairies that N has colored.
we wished each fairy well in their new homes in new york, pennsylvania, louisiana, new hampshire, and california… and they’re off in the mail now to these new homes and new adventures! so excited to see which 5 ornaments we receive in return… we can take a peek at the flickr group for the swap to see what others made, too… how fun!
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