Bleached Pine Cone Ornaments

On a recent shopping trip to a high end home decor store I saw some bleached pine cones and was totally smitten with them! I was not, however, smitten with the price. I figured that I could probably make my own bleached pine cones for pennies.

At my local Goodwill I found a bag of scented pine cones for ninety-nine cents. I took them home and put them in a five gallon bucket with a bleach and water mixture. I used equal parts water and bleach. If I were to do it again, I would not dilute the bleach. I weighted down the pine cones with a clay pot so that they would remain submerged. I let them soak in the bleach for twenty-four hours.

After soaking in the bleach solution, the pine cones had closed up. I placed them on a parchment covered tray and left them out in the sun for two days to dry. Once they start drying, the pine cones will open up. This is how they looked after drying.

Next I used a paint brush to brush just the tips of the pine cones with glue. You could also use mod podge. I then dusted them with some fine gold glitter just to give them a little sparkle. The gold was beautiful, but I think some chunky clear glitter would also be lovely.

Once the glitter and glue had dried, I cut two lengths of brown satin ribbon. One to use as a loop to hang the ornament, and one to use as a bow to hide where the loop was glued to the base of the pine cone. Here is the finished ornament.

The bleached pine cones are also beautiful as bowl filler in a fall vignette.

Here is a YouTube video with the full tutorial.