This week Unplug Your Kids' weekly unplugged project is all about Rough. I was completely stumped at first! I'm usually pretty good at thinking outside the box when it comes to crafty projects but it took me all week to get a real 'lightbulb' moment *grin* and at last our pinecone art project was created! There are tons of pinecones all around us here and we actually have scads of them in bags in our garage as well for such an occasion as this. They're rough and prickly to the touch so I think they fit perfectly into the 'rough' category :)
We started by picking out the nicest cones we had in a variety of sizes and colors. I wanted ones that had nice sturdy scales that would hold up to some rough and tough twisting as we pulled them apart for our project. You'll know which ones are not good for this project because as you pull at the scales on the cone they crumble and split, you don't want to use those :)
We laid down a layer of newspaper over the kitchen table before we started to catch all of the dust, dirt, and pinecone bits that dropped or flew in some cases all over :) and sorted them into small, medium & large categories. This made it easier to find the right sizes later when we started working with them on our paper as we didn't have to do a lot of searching through a big pile looking for the right ones :)
When I thought of pinecones and their rough textural appearance I immediately thought of an owl, so I sketched out a nice fat owl on each of our papers so that we had an outline to follow :) Using a fair amount of regular white glue we started to fill in sections of our owls with it and then placed layers of pinecones into the glue.
You can get really creative with your pinecone pieces to by defining different areas of your picture by changing the direction of the pinecone scales in different sections or by using half pinecones like I did for the eyes in the above photo so you get a 3D effect as well :)
Here's another one of our 'rough' pinecone owls :) I just love them! I can't wait until the glue is completely dry so we can hang them on the wall in our nature corner :) Have fun making your own pinecone creatures!
These are absolutely gorgeous! We have *never* pulled apart pine cones to use in a craft before, and I am so impressed. We're hooked on owls in our house right now too (20 month old BabyGirl is reading over my shoulder and right now loudly voicing her disgust that I went away from the page with the "ow-ow") so this would be a great project for us. Thanks for the inspiration!
These are adorable. I love your blogsite. I have no idea how to do all this cute stuff on my page. My is really plain. Everything is really cute and you-I guess. I can picture what kind of person you are through this. I love it!
You are certainly an inspiration! What a wonderful idea! Again, you are blessed! We don't have many pinecones around here (at least in our particular vacinity). I couldn't think of a project to save my life! I really miss doing the unplugged projects! :( I really need to get back into it! Nice work. :)
We also used a pinecone for our "rough" project, but it was nothing compared to what you did. I'm going to try to get my little one to help create an owl too!
You can find us under Mr. Linky as
The Power of Two.
That came out so cute! We just picked a bunch of pine cones this morning from a few branches my husband had to remove and I'm saving them for something.
Heather
www.myfamilylovesit.com
