A fun thing happened the other day. I found a huge bag of pine cones in my basement.
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I was excited beyond belief with our find. Pine cones make wonderful craft materials. The scales and the spaces in between make it a great material for children to use. They can stuff pom poms or tissue in between the scales or wrap the pine cones in yarn or ribbon. There are a number of options.
We wanted to make some cute critters with our pine cones and used air dry clay and pipe cleaners to form our creations. We are huge fans of the air dry clay, but you can try this with play dough as well.
Press a small piece of clay underneath the pine cone to make a sturdy base for your creature.
Roll out a ball of clay to form a head and press it into the upper portion of your pine cone. Press googly eyes into the clay. (When the clay hardens, if an eye falls out, use a dab of glue to hold it back into place)
We cut a bunch of pipe cleaners in half and some into smaller pieces to form arms, wings, antennae or other details. You may also carve into the clay to form facial details. My daughter used her finger to carve a mouth into one of her creations. She made four critters in all. They were adorable and she even gave me one as a present to put on my night stand.
I made a few animals of my own.
I used the same techniques as above. We used the clay at the bottom to form a solid base and then used clay to form the eyes for the owl and then the head for the butterfly and the turkey. Each of these got a pair of googly eyes pressed into them. The beaks for the owl and the turkey were cut out of orange foam and the waddle for the turkey was cut out of red foam. Glue was used to hold these into place. Pipe cleaners were used to form feathers, wings, feet and antennae and horns for our assorted creatures.
These were so much fun to make. I am sure that we will be making more of these together soon.
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