Painted Pinecone Wreath

There is never a wrong time for a wreath on your front door, but I would argue that December is the PRIME time. There is just something about a wreath on your door during the holidays that screams festive and non-Scroogey, perhaps the worst insult of them all. As much as I love a traditional green pine wreath, I wanted to go outside the box for this one. I came across the idea to make flowers out of pine cones a few months ago and was immediately intrigued. You basically cut the pine cone in half to reveal a sort of flower bloom shape. For this Painted Pinecone Wreath we decided to mix pinecones with fresh pine boughs but put it into a fresh color palette. Everything got a painted a fresh coat of white and then we added a few pops of color, and a dash of our favorite gold leaf.

 

Painted Pinecone Wreath

Materials:

• Twig Wreath Frame
• Pine cones–just gather them from outside and try and find ones that aren’t too thick.
• Pine Boughs. We bought a $4 bunch at our local grocery store and it came with 3 boughs of various pine.
• Spray paint in white, blush, hot pink, and red
• Gold Leaf Kit (Sepp Leaf is our favorite!)
• Hot Glue Gun
• Sturdy Hand Clippers
• Work gloves (sounds optional, but is NOT optional!)

Instructions:

1. For the pine cones, we used a mixture of tops, middles, and bottoms to create our wreath. To get the middles, you’ll need your work gloves and clippers.
2. Take your pine cones and using your clippers cut the top portion of the pine cone off. This can be difficult, so make sure you’re wearing work gloves to protect your hands. Pine cones with a thinner center stem are much easier to manage. Use a twisting motion to help you separate the pieces.
3. We used 32 pinecones total in our wreath. Once you have enough pinecones for your wreath, set them on a large piece of cardboard or other spraypaint safe-surface, making sure the side you’d like to see on your wreath is facing up.
4. Spray paint the pinecones, the wreath base, and your pine boughs with white spray paint. You made need a couple of coats on the pine cones. We wanted a bit of the green to show through on the pine, so we only did one coat on those.
5. Once dry, take a few of the pine cones and spray the centers with the shades of pink and red. I added color to 18 pine cones, 6 in each color.
6. To finish, add a touch of gold leaf to the centers of each colored pinecone, following the directions on the kit.
7. Now that all of your components are prepped and ready, use your hot glue gun to attach the cones and pine to the twig wreath base.
8. I do the cones and pine boughs at the same time so I can achieve the look I want. You can always add more pine at the end though.

Hang up your Painted Pinecone Wreath and add a festive touch to your front door! The great thing about this wreath is that it will carry you all the way through Valentine’s Day! Two birds, one….pinecone!

Thank you Sepp Leaf for providing the gold leaf

Photography by Jane Merritt