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Here’s what you need:
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1. Pinecones
2. Felt
3. Ribbon or string for hanging.
4. A glue gun (This is a necessity and only a couple dollars at the craft store if you don’t already have one! I don’t think there is a glue in a bottle on the market that would stick to pine cones.)
And just for the owls:
Feathers
Googly eyes
And just for the elves:
Tiny pom-poms
Pipe cleaners
Crayola Model Magic in Skin Tones
We found pine cones in our backyard and then put them in the oven for 2 hours at 250 degrees to kill any bugs and dry them out a bit. Of course, you can just buy them at a craft store.
For the owls:
1. Cut a beak from felt.
2. Cut a string to hang.
3. Wide part of the cone on top, using a glue gun (for little ones I let them choose the color of beak and the feathers they wished to use), glue the string, beak, feathers and eyes on. It’s that easy. Abbey added a bow for a girl owl.
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For the elves:
Using the Crayola Model Magic..
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…roll into head shapes, and dry. To speed up drying time I set them near a heat duct.
1. Using Sharpies or other thin markers, draw a face on the hardened modeling clay.
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2. Cut a wide triangle out of felt for the hat.
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3. Cut a string for hanging.
4. Glue the string or ribbon into the triangle, and then glue the triangle into a cone shape.
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6. Trim hat if necessary.
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7. Glue hat on elf head.
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8. Cut and tie scarf. (You can use fabric like picture above, but we mostly used pieces of felt like below.)
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10. Cut mittens and boots out of felt and glue onto the ends of pipe cleaner.
11. Glue appendages onto pine cone.
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Need gift ideas?
Here's a list of our favorite, most-played with, delivered-to-your-doorstep, Mom-approved toys.
And here are our favorite games.
And our favorite books.
Here are some great teen gift ideas.
By age and interest here.