Pine Cone Christmas Tree Ornaments

Pinecones are free and abundant in Georgia. My students and I collected hundreds of them just from walking around our campus. Students painted the pine cones with either white or red paint and then used some creativity to decide whether to add stacked wooden beads, ribbon, twine, or silk leaves and flowers to decorate their pinecones and make it possible to hang on the tree. Hot glue is an ornament maker's best friend. Fuzzy twin can fit through wooden beads one you fold  the end of the twine into the fold of a piece of shipping tape (or masking tape) and cut the tape close to the twine and cutting the end into a point. If you want to add bling to a tree or wreath you can spray paint the pinecone with gold or silver paint or brush the edges with glue and roll in glitter. We were trying to create a rustic look and I think it worked well.

Stenciled Wooden Christmas Tree Ornaments

Wooden ornaments have a warm, home spun feel to them. In the past I've had students paint or draw on wooden discs, but this year, I had stencils that I bought for another project, and realized that a quick few sprays of spray paint could produce 4 or five ornaments in the matter of seconds, which means that 100 ornaments could be made in a morning. The stencils were large enough that it could cover two ornaments at a time to get a less centered design. It only takes a couple minutes to dry so I would rotate a board with about four ornaments being prepped while the last tray was drying. I loved how they turned out!