How to make pinecone elves

How to make pinecone elves

These adorable elves are made from all natural or recyclable materials and can be as unique or as uniformed as you choose! Katie Armstrong from Durham Wildlife Trust explains how to make them.

Enjoy making these lovely pinecone elves! Hats can be made from felt or from seed pods – acorns for berets or beech seed pods for a more pointed, haphazard style. 

Sit them above the fireplace with their little twine legs dangling or pop them peeking out from the boughs of the Christmas tree. 

The collection of materials needed to make pinecone elves: a glue gun, pine cones, felt, twine, wooden beads, a fineliner and seed pods

What you need to make pinecone elves © Katie Armstrong

You will need

  • Pinecones
  • Felt or seed pods
  • Wooden beads
  • Fine liner
  • Glue gun - children must be supervised by an adult when using a glue gun as the temperature can become very hot

How to make a pinecone elf

  1. Using a fine liner, draw a face on your wooden bead. You can use paint and a very fine brush if you don't have a fine liner
     
  2. Time to make the hat! If you are making a felt hat, put a glue stick or something of a similar size on your felt (I used a small plant pot) and draw around it to make a neat circle. 

    Roll the felt circle to create a cone and use the glue gun to apply glue down the side of the straight line. This should then stick together to make your felt hat. Decorate your hat by adding a bead or a bell if you’re feeling fancy!

    The photos below show how to do this step-by-step. 
  1. Using your glue gun, attach the wooden bead to your chosen pinecone and the hat – whether seed pod or felt – to the wooden bead.
  2. You can then choose to give your elf little twine legs or stick arms. If you choose to add legs, threading a bead through the twine then knotting it can make for fun shoes.
  3. If you are planning on sitting your elf in the Christmas tree, use the glue gun to attach a loop of twine to the back of the pinecone. This can then be wrapped around one of the boughs to stop your elf from toppling over.

 

Happy crafting this Christmas!

Two elves made out of pinecones set on a shelf, with fairy lights behind them

Pinecone elves © Katie Armstrong