Handmade Ornaments - Pinecone Gnome Tutorial

This week's How-To is a Handmade Ornament: Pinecone Gnome by Donni. It was originally published on her site The Magic Onions . Great nature project to make and decorate with!


We made the most delightful little ornaments for our Christmas tree today... Pine Cone Gnomes. Little by little, we are adding our magic to our handmade ornament collection. In the Waldorf spirit, we try to use natural materials that we find around us. We take a basket on every walk and collect wonderful natural treasures to turn into our own Christmas treasures. It is enchanting to watch the wonder on little faces as they use what they have collected to make a handmade Christmas.
To make our gnomes we needed;
* pine cones
* round balls for heads (found at craft stores - or if you can't wait for a trip to the craft store, use an acorn!)
* White wool (yarn will work too)
* a hot glue gun
* ribbon

Drill a hole through the head.

If you are using an acorn, separate the cap from the acorn and drill a hole through the cap.

Thread a loop of ribbon through the hole.

And the head.

Use your hot glue gun to stick hair onto the heads. We decided that the bigger pine cone gnome would be a granny and the smaller acorn gnome would be a grampa.

For the acorn head, we stuck the hair into the cap and then the cap back onto the acorn.

For Grampa Gnome, we rolled a little wool in the palm of our hands to make a snowy white beard. We stuck the beard onto his pine cone.

Then we stuck his head onto his white beard and Viola! He came to life.

We stuck Granny's head onto her pine cone and she joined Grampa Gnome on our chandelier, waiting for their spots on our Christmas tree.
They are very merry little grandparent gnomes. We love their pine cone bodies and when the sunlight twinkles on the chandelier, they catch little rainbows in their snowy white hair.

Merry blessings and magic,

Donni

Visit The Magic Onion Blog or Donni's etsy shop at: www.fairyfolk.etsy.com

This tutorial was brought to you by Natalie, of Woolhalla.