Making Elves, Santas from Pine Cones for Christmas

It's that time of year again, when we gather all of our Christmas decorations and begin to decorate the inside of our home for the holidays. Maybe your hosting several Christmas parties this year and you need some different arrangements or decorations to wow your guest.

I have a few ideas to get you started. This easy craft will make cute adorable Santa's and Elves and you can make Mrs Clause too if you wish. There are several items you will need to gather before beginning this project.

The first thing you'll need is to locate some pine cones. These can be small or large according to what size you would like your crafts to be. You will also want to get several sheets of colorful felt ranging from green, red, white and black.

You will want to have a glue gun or some other heavy duty glue that holds together about anything. You will want to purchase at a craft store some small wooden balls, the kind that you may see in craft stores that people make miniature dolls with.

The last thing you'll need to buy is assorted colors of pipe cleaners and the ones with glitter are the best they stand out more and also you'll need some acrylic paints or any type of paint that works on wood.You will also want some cu-tips as well about 10 will work.

Once you've gathered all of your supplies it's time to get started. Lay out some old cloth on your work table or use old magazines or newspapers. Get all of your paint select the pine cone you'll be working on first.

Let's start with the elf. You will want to paint your pine cone green. Please make sure it is completely dry before beginning any other work on it. You can jump right into painting your next pine cone while the first one is drying. Let's paint the next one completely red for the Santa.

Once your pine cones are completely dry select some pipe cleaners for their arms and legs. You'll want to select green for the elves and red or white for Santa or Mrs Clause. Using your glue gun gently glue the pipe cleaners to the side of the pine cone for arms and at the bottom of the pine cones for their legs. Make sure they are completely dry.

Once the legs and arms are dry take the small wooden round ball and paint it the color you want the face to be. I recommend white on Santa and the elf. Allow time to dry and once it's dry add eyes and lips with paint using your cu-tips for the brushes.

Once all of this is dry it's time to take on the felt . Take your red felt pieces and cut out a hat for Santa. Glue this to the top of the wooden head. You may elect to use a piece of white felt and cut it in a circle for the tip of his hat or buy a small white pom pom and glue it to the top of his hat.

You will want to do the same with the green felt for the elf. Glue it on the wooden ball and add a red ball to the hat out of felt. Once the hats have all dried it's time to cut out your felt for small mittens. Cut these out and glue them to the pipe cleaners. And then it's time to move on to the feet. Add small pieces of cut out felt for the feet, you can use green and add a splash of red paint for the elves.

I did enjoy working on these with the little ones at the holidays we also used a small candy cane and glued it inside the elves hands. You may want to try other things you have around the house for the shoes of Santa or Elves or Mrs Clause. bottle caps work as well as using acorns for their feet then paint them.

Once your project is complete, display it on your mantel or table. You can buy that cheap fake snow to spray around them or find those miniature toys in a craft shop such as Michael's and lay them around them as well. The sky's the limit once you've created them as what you can add to spruce things up.

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Author: Candus Poyner

www.michaels.com