Pine cone Ornaments

My husband and I went out on a hike a few weeks ago, well I really went on a pine cone expedition.  I found a lot of great pine cones and immediately knew i wanted to make ornaments with them.

I left them outside to make sure there weren't any bugs I'd be bringing into the apartment .  A few days later I headed to the balcony with gold spray paint, sparkles and some garbage bags.

I put the pinecones on the garbage bags and got the spray and sparkles ready.  After spraying one side of the pinecones, I quickly sprinkled the sparkles while the paint was still wet.  It's a good idea to do them in batches of 4 - 6 cones at a time.  They sat out in the sun for probably 20 minutes before I flipped them and sprayed the other side.  

I let them sit for a few hours until completely dry then brought them inside to complete the ornament process.

The next day, I gathered my glue gun, some ribbon and some small christmas bows.  Cut about 6-8" of ribbon, this will be the loop the ornament hangs from so make it longer or shorter depending on what you want.  Make a loop and tie a bow with the two ends.  Take the paper off the sticky part of the ribbon and make sure the glue gun is nice and hot.

When you put the hot glue on, you need to work fast and put the center of the ribbon bottom on top of the pine cone and immediately top with the bow.  Make sure you use a lot of glue.

Let them dry overnight and they're ready to hang in the morning!