Here’s what you need:
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.
For the elves:
Using the Crayola Model Magic..
…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.
2. Cut a wide triangle out of felt for the hat.
3. Cut a string for hanging.
4. Glue the string or ribbon into the triangle, and then glue the triangle into a cone shape.
5. Glue pom-pom on hat.
6. Trim hat if necessary.
7. Glue hat on elf head.
8. Cut and tie scarf. (You can use fabric like picture above, but we mostly used pieces of felt like below.)
9. Cut arms and legs out of pipe cleaner.
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.