Pinecone Garland

For the past few weeks, I've been admiring some lovely garlands and buntings on Etsy and I got the creative itch to make my own! I already had most of the supplies I needed to create the garland I envisioned, except for pine cones. I scoured my block for pine trees so that I could snag some fallen cones, but I couldn't find any. There is a lot of foliage in Champaign, but not so many pine trees. So I headed to Walmart and found a bag of cinnamon scented (bonus!) pine cones for $4 in their Christmas section. I love that Walmart already has Christmas stuff out. I perused each aisle slowly, taking in all of the sparkly ornaments and shimmery ribbon. Eek! I love Christmas!

To make my garland, I used some tweed twine, scissors and five similarly sized pine cones (although, I think the next one I make will be all different shapes and sizes). I wanted to hang my garland from the hutch in the living room, so I measured the width of the hutch and multiplied it by two - that way, the garland would have enough room to be draped from one end of the hutch to the other. Then I cut my twine and started with my first pine cone by simply tying a circle around the top of it. Next, I spaced the next pine cones by about five inches and looped the twine around it and continued to do the same with the remaining three cones. Last, I tied little knots in between each pine cone because I thought it would add a little more texture to the twine. To hang it, I stapled the twine to the top of the hutch (I know that sounds ghetto, but the staples are hidden).

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how simple this project was and how cute it turned out. Pine cones are nice, because they are seasonal and I can hang them all winter long. Here is the finished product: