How to make a budget New Year's decor with your own hands and not spend a penny? I found the most creative and fresh ideas that will help you turn simple pine cones into real works of decorative art.
Alternative Christmas tree
This idea will certainly appeal to conservationists who, as a matter of principle, do not use live spruce as New Year's tree. To create an alternative Christmas tree you will need a base - a small cut of a stump or a pot for indoor flower. If desired, the cone can be coated with paint; for these purposes, you can use regular gouache or decorative aerosols with glitter. To decorate such a Christmas tree, textile bows, felt balls, sequins, beads, and artificial snow are useful. 
Decorative Christmas trees made from pine cones 
Alternative Christmas trees 
Simple and beautiful New Year's decor 
You can decorate the cone with beads
Original Christmas tree toy
Do Christmas decorations with your own hands is a good tradition. Children will especially like it. You can create original jewelry the whole family. To do this, you should stock up on jute, rain, glue with glitter, paints and satin ribbons. Do-it-yourself toys will transform the interior and make the atmosphere very cozy and warm. 
For a decorative effect, the pine cone can be painted white. 
All you have to do is decorate the pine cone with a satin jar, and it will become a wonderful Christmas tree toy.
Decor element
Pine and fir cones evoke the forest and fill the house with a wonderful aroma. And even if the interior is decorated faux Christmas tree, it will give the impression that it is real. To enhance the effect, spruce and Pine cones can be used as decorative elements. For example, put candles in transparent jars, tie the vessels with jute and complete the composition with several cones. To give them a snowy look, you need to paint them with white or silver paint in advance. 
DIY decorative candlesticks
Festive composition
An interesting design will make the atmosphere in the house especially solemn New Year's composition. You can choose a place for it in the hallway on the console, in the living room on the chest of drawers, in the dining room on the middle of the table, in the bedroom on the bedside table or dressing table. The simplest option is to put wicker basket, glass or wooden bowl filled with pine or fir cones. You can surround the composition spruce branches, LED garland, candlesticks and figurines New Year's characters. Holiday mood will be provided for both the owners of the house and the guests! 
Beautiful New Year's composition 
Colored pine cones as a decorative element 
Decorative New Year's composition 
Festive composition of pine cones and fir branches 
Decorative cones- perfect for decoration.
For this we need:
Gouache
Any nail polishes
Fantasy
Cones
Artificial snow or salt
Several brushes
We get the materials ourselves: we go into the forest and with good thoughts we find beautiful, closed cones. After we have collected them, we must cook them (not to eat them for dinner, but to kill all the microbes). 
You need to cook for 20-30 minutes, let them cool. You can put them on the battery or come up with other ways to make them dry faster and open up beautifully. After drying, they will open up beautifully and finally remind us of the real bud look we always imagine!
But you don’t need to paint everything at once, but in stages. At the first stage, we paint with paints (one or many colors). If you are painting in several colors, we advise you to pause between paintings to allow the freshly applied paint to absorb and dry. On average, gouache dries completely in 5-10 minutes.
At the second stage, you can already paint with varnishes, glitter and any other “glitters” - it’s a very simple matter and it takes a couple of minutes to paint. Don’t forget to buy dry artificial snow in the store, but if you feel sorry for money or all the stores are already closed, then replace the snow with salt - the effect is the same!
Interesting usage ideas:
Option 2
Decorating a pine cone for the New Year
with their own with my own hands you can do something wonderful Christmas decorations(or even a small souvenir!) for the New Year.
For work we will need: gold or silver paint (acrylic or gouache, or just nail polish with glitter will do), large thin wire, ribbon and shiny rope (although you can paint just a thick thread).
1. Let's choose a suitable cute pine cone.
2. Apply paint with a brush to the outer surface of the cone (you can also apply paint to the inner surface, but this is optional). I took the golden one acrylic paint. This is how the golden cone turned out:
3. Now we will need some wire and make a kind of garland out of it (see photo). The garland is made on one wire, and its length depends on the size of the cone (the larger the cone, the longer the garland).
4. Twist the garland around the pine cone.
5. We tie a rope (so that there is something to hang it from) and a ribbon (so that it is beautiful).
My cone turned out to be golden and red, but you can make it silver with white or blue, and in general use any combination of colors - there are no limits to your imagination!
Design examples
Gilded cones. To paint the pine cones gold or silver, you will need a can of spray paint, which can be purchased at any craft store. These pine cones and small Christmas balls in a glass vase make a nice composition for a coffee table or a mirror in the hallway.
Mini Christmas tree. A pine cone can easily turn into a miniature Christmas tree if you “hang” small ball beads made of felt on it (of course, they will have to be placed on glue). Such Christmas trees can be “planted” on the holiday table, and then given to friends as a memorable New Year’s souvenir.
Figurines. Best idea for New Year's leisure with children: we remember kindergarten skills - turning pine cones, acorns and twigs into dogs, forest creatures and bunnies.
Candlesticks. You can place small pine cones, nuts or acorns in a glass candlestick and place a large candle in the center.
New Year's pendant. No comments.
Basket of cones. A wicker basket filled to the brim with pine cones looks very impressive. And if you decorate it with a glowing Christmas tree garland, the basket will become simply magical!
Gift wrapping. A pine cone can easily replace a festive bow and create a winter mood.
New Year's composition. To create such a decorative group, you only need your imagination: combine candles, pine cones, spruce and pine branches, christmas balls and tangerines. So that the composition pleases the eye and lifts the mood. Just be careful with the fire: it is best to place the candles and pine cones on a flat dish.
New Year's picture. We paint the cones white using a spray can, glue them to the wreath frame and place them in the frame - the New Year's picture is ready!
Christmas medley. A traditional Christmas composition of pine cones, twigs with berries, cinnamon sticks and oranges studded with cloves (such fragrant balls are called “pomanders”).
Bring a little bit of nature into your home this amazing holiday with our easy-to-make home decorations and tableware.
A very simple forest touch - pine cones sprinkled with snow will instantly decorate your windowsill or table.
Take large, tall buds and trim them down to the base so they can stand upright. Lightly sprinkle them with fake snow. Hot glue beads or any small decorations to their feet.
You can very beautifully decorate napkins laid out for guests with pine cones.
Roll the napkins into tubes. Wrap them wide first satin ribbon, and on top it is velvet, 2 times narrower. Tie a thin silver ribbon on the small cones, running it along the lower tier of the paws. Tie this ribbon on the velvet one.
Give an ordinary window an elegant and fairy-tale look with the help of pine cone pendants.
Cut ribbons into random lengths (we alternated organza and taffeta ribbons). Using push pins, secure each pine cone to the end of the ribbon. Glue 3 small ornaments around the tip of the button. Hang the ribbons at the same distance from each other. They can be tied on the eaves or glued with tape or masking tape on the window slope.
Gifts decorated with forest elements look very New Year's.
After wrapping the gifts in paper, secure them with double sided tape beautiful wide ribbons. Using hot glue, glue the pine cones in different places on the packaging.
Lovers of romance will love large thick candles decorated with a wreath of pine cones.
Take different sized pine cones and use hot glue to glue them around the base of the candles.
To make the guests at the table feel the atmosphere of the New Year, make nameplates for each of them. X.
Trim the buds until they are stable. Decorate their paws with beads. Attach nameplates to the pine cones using narrow silver ribbons for guests.
We offer an idea for a charming tablecloth decoration with pine cones for the New Year.
Carefully trim the base of the pine cone and insert a small hook into it with the side where the thread is. Sew the eye of the hook to the hem of the tablecloth. Attach a small round decoration to the tip of the cone using the same hook.
How to make budget New Year's decor with your own hands and not spend a penny? We have found the most creative and fresh ideas that will help you turn simple pine cones into real works of decorative art.
Alternative Christmas tree
This idea will certainly appeal to conservationists who, as a matter of principle, do not use a live spruce as a New Year's tree. To create an alternative Christmas tree, you will need a base - a small cut of a stump or a pot for an indoor flower. If desired, the cone can be coated with paint; for these purposes, you can use regular gouache or decorative aerosols with glitter. To decorate such a Christmas tree, textile bows, felt balls, sequins, beads, and artificial snow are useful.
Original Christmas tree toy
Making Christmas tree decorations with your own hands is a good tradition. Children will especially like it. You can create original jewelry with the whole family. To do this, you should stock up on jute, rain, glue with glitter, paints and satin ribbons. Do-it-yourself toys will transform the interior and make the atmosphere very cozy and warm.
Decor element
Pine and fir cones evoke the forest and fill the house with a wonderful aroma. And even if the interior is decorated with an artificial Christmas tree, you will get the impression that it is real. To enhance the effect, fir and pine cones can be used as decorative elements. For example, put candles in transparent jars, tie the vessels with jute and complete the composition with several cones. To give them a snowy look, you need to paint them with white or silver paint in advance.
Festive composition
An interesting New Year's composition will make the atmosphere in the house especially solemn. You can choose a place for it in the hallway on the console, in the living room on the chest of drawers, in the dining room on the middle of the table, in the bedroom on the bedside table or dressing table. The simplest option is to place a wicker basket, glass or wooden bowl filled with pine or fir cones. You can surround the composition with fir branches, LED garland, candlesticks and figurines of New Year's characters. A festive mood will be ensured for both the owners of the house and the guests!
We already dwelt on this in detail last time. Now let's talk about the more adult, so to speak, use of pine cones to create an exquisite themed interior in the winter season and on new year holidays. In this article we will look at the most simple options, which do not require (not counting preparation for dyeing or bleaching the cones) a lot of time, money and effort.
1. The simplest and at the same time spectacular option- wash it, then paint it completely, or apply artificial snow on top from a spray can, and then nail it on top with a nail/staple, glue it with hot glue (or glue a large bead to the cone with hot glue, and then insert a string/ribbon into the hole of the bead) or screw it on a thin screw or screw with a loop and a ribbon with a small bow. Or without a bow - depending on the final purpose of using such a design. After this, the cones can be hung on the walls, chandeliers, hung on the tablecloth on the sides of the table - and used anywhere else of your choice.
The main thing here is to choose the right tape. Cozy, non-shiny ribbons made of thick paper look best with pine cones. soft fabric, like fleece, suede, plaid fabric. And here regular tapes with a smooth shiny surface paired with cones they look vulgar.
Garlands are also made from large cones by tying ribbons between the scales - at the 2-3-4 level from the “butts”. Here it is convenient and beautiful to take thin ribbons made of simple red and white fabric in one layer, as well as natural rope like hemp, jute, etc.
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Decorating chairs on the same basis:
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But making a beautiful bunch of cones on ribbons, as it turned out, is quite difficult. And the point here is not in the fastening, but in the fact that the cones in such a “bundle” most often look like a dense pile of something unknown. Basic Rules:
— Introduce as many levels as far apart from each other as possible: not a single pair of cones used should hang at the same level or approximately at the same level;
- Never use wide belts for such work - only narrow or medium width at most, otherwise you will only add bulkiness and clumsiness to the structure;
- Don’t use a lot of cones, but also not a lot: 3 look... poor, and 7 are again... a bunch;
— For such compositions, it is best to first paint/sprinkle the pine cones with artificial snow, rather than hang them as is.
Cone pendants:
2. It is no more difficult to put the pine cones, finished in the same way (bleached/painted/“sprinkled with snow” - white paint or artificial snow) into vases, dishes, large flower pots. The main thing is to know specific ideas and always keep the final design in mind.
We take large vases, completely transparent and without additional details. They require brightly colored buds. Combinations of colors and shades depend on the occasion and the design of the room (but do not forget that the colors of the pine cones should also be perfectly combined with each other):
— Cones are painted to match the main one color scheme New Year tree and others holiday decorations in the house (or to match the color scheme of the New Year's table, for example);
— Cones are painted with colors and shades that complement the palette of your interior (see color wheel): muted if the interior itself is catchy, and bright if the interior is very neutral (in the latter case, the cones in the vase will become a focal point, an accent in the room);
- If you are dealing with a children's room or kindergarten, a bathroom (or occasionally kitchens in a similar style), where usually a completely neutral interior is interspersed with many small bright details different colors (more than 3), paint the pine cones in the same catchy colors that are in the room.
Flower pots You can even take floor ones - for big shots. We add spruce branches and the simplest Christmas balls if desired - and amazing compositions are ready. Here the cones are usually not painted, well, the maximum is in muted silver or muted/pale gold shades. Or white paint/artificial snow is “sprinkled” on top - along the edges of the opened scales. Take flowerpots, dishes, pots from natural materials: wood, ceramics. If the latter has a pattern, choose Scandinavian motifs, ascetic or rustic rough styles and “winter” styles - that is, where in discreet and often uncomplicated patterns there is a lot of white, as if the pots are again dusted with snow.
And here, not artificial transparent cones were used, but simply a well-chosen paint: metallic with a special glossy silver-gold tint.
Carefully select the paint colors for the pine cones and the shape of the vase/bowl, and basically nothing else will be needed:
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And here, for example, soft large scales were carefully separated from the cones and glued with hot glue from top to bottom in rows and overlapping onto a transparent simple candlestick - or any other container of your choice.
4. Cones under glass. Glass caps/domes are not very common in our country and, nevertheless, they are quite easy to find on sale, and their prices are not that high. Moreover, the result is worth it.
With transparent Christmas balls, from which the metal crowns and loops have been removed
Both the cones and the dome are dusted with artificial snow
6. Gift wrapping and decoration New Year's table. Everything is the same here: the main thing is to give preference to natural and simple materials, because the cones themselves, in combination with spruce branches, are more than expressive, cozy and interesting.
These are the card holders. We saw the cone vertically from top to bottom to the middle and saw off the butt so that the cone becomes stable. If desired, trim the cone as described above - and you're done!
Cleaned light driftwood, to which small cones are glued on top with a purchased modern decorative mesh between them - with pearl-like beads on a fishing line:
Remove 3-4 scales from the top of the cone, then saw off the remaining top (consisting of 3-4 rows of scales), glue a beautiful bead into its center - and glue the top to the ribbon. Can decorate napkins, gifts, guest/decorative bath towels, etc.
7. Decoration for door handles - a bump in a bag. From notes on yellowish paper we roll up a neat little bag, inside it along the edge on top we glue an openwork paper napkin, and then we put a pine cone on top of it with glue. We fasten a natural simple rope with any in a convenient way, and hang one of these decorations on the handle of each door in the house.
How to make colored cones for crafts for the New Year? Many craftswomen ask about this. After all, cones are considered an excellent material for making crafts. And she herself looks very beautiful and can decorate any interior for the holiday. Among other things, the cone is also considered a durable material, and crafts based on it will be stored for several years and look like new.
How to handle buds
Before you start working on your future masterpiece, you should first prepare the cones. If there are large stains, they should be washed and dried in a well-ventilated area, but not near heat sources. If there is no heavy contamination, then you can simply thoroughly clean the cones with a stiff brush from soil and debris, shake them off, and, if necessary, dry them.
If the cones were collected unripe and not completely open, then it is permissible to place them in a slightly heated oven, but it is imperative to leave the door a little open so that moisture can escape. This is required for the buds to open and the fruit to fall out. Having opened, the scales will begin to resemble spruce branches.
This must also be done to dry the buds if they are wet, otherwise ready product can quickly deteriorate.
The resulting blanks can be left in in kind, selectively or completely paint, varnish, decorate with artificial decor, for example, using artificial snow. Everything will depend on your imagination and ingenuity.
How to paint pine cones in different ways
Fir and pine cones are beautiful in their original form, but if you need to include colored components in the craft, then they should be painted. Due to the fact that the surface of the cones is porous and matte, the paint is perfectly absorbed and adheres to it. You can paint them with any means, including ordinary gouache or tempera, but this coloring will not last long and will get dirty. It is advisable to select paints that are the most stable, such as acrylic, for example.
Professional needlewomen most often use the following materials for work:
- A set of acrylic dyes (in jars or tubes), which are used to design individual strokes or form texture.
- Aerosol paints. You can also use automotive enamels. With their help you can achieve a beautiful canvas and uniform coverage, and they dry quickly.
- Aerosol paints - metallics of various shades. Using them, you can achieve excellent special effects.
- Finishing varnishes. IN in this case It is also advisable to use an aerosol container - then the varnish applies easily, quickly and evenly.
- Dyes and varnishes to give special effects - “frosty” coating, sparkles, artificial snow and others. Using these materials is the easiest way to decorate pine cones, even when there is not enough time to work.
When working with paints and varnishes, and especially with aerosol and automotive paints, you should take into account that they have a pungent odor. Therefore, it is better to use them in a well-ventilated non-residential area or outdoors.
It is possible that it will be necessary to apply several layers of coating, but it is worth considering that each layer must be completely dry. Therefore, before applying the next layer of coating, you should make sure that the previous one is completely dry, otherwise the already designed pattern or coating may be damaged.
How to paint pine cones white
To color the pine cones white (or even gold), you will need to use:
- A piece of foam rubber (preferably thicker or folded in two layers);
- Gouache paint;
- File;
- Cones.
In this case, white gouache is used. It must be diluted with acrylic varnish and poured onto the foam rubber (the thicker it is, the deeper the cone will sink into it, and the better the scales will be painted).
A file should be placed under the foam rubber to prevent paint from leaking. Then put the cone and gradually twist it in a circle.
It is better to wear gloves on your hands.
In this case, not much paint is used.
The foam rubber should be turned over to the other side at short intervals, because the paint gradually leaks to the bottom.
In 30 minutes of work you can prepare this many cones, as in the photo:
An example of what can be obtained from pine cones after painting.
Cones can be used from various types of conifers, of all shapes and sizes. Cones painted in gold, white or silver shades will look original and creative in the craft. In this case, you can use aerosol enamel. It comes in a huge variety of colors and shades and dries quickly.
Video on the topic of the article