Pinterest Dream Crusher: Making of a Pine Cone Wreath

I’m not sure why I decided to actually try to make something I saw on Pinterest; perhaps I have greater confidence in my skills than I care to acknowledge. I am also a hopeless dreamer living on a budget so making my very own Pine Cone Wreath in only an hour (!), super low budget (!) and with barely any effort (!) sounded like a solid idea.

I fell in love with this wreath– simple, classy and perfect for my door. Despite the fact we live in Florida, we have some pine trees growing in the area and my Mom happens to have a solid amount of pine cones laying in her backyard (which she never frequents due to mosquitoes which eagerly await for any sign of warm blooded creatures).

Armed with Thermacell, a truly great mosquito repellent, I ran to the pine tree and picked up as many cones I could. As you can see below (just some I picked), they are represented in their most raw and realistic form.

Albeit the Pinterest instruction does not say to paint them, I decided I wanted to add some gold-on the color wheel, brown and gold look rather compelling.

 

The spray painting was actually the only thing that turned out quite nicely but don’t be an idiot like me and wear gloves before you do it and leave them to dry for a couple of hours. Spray paint the ugly ones and keep the nice brown looking ones for the final selection.

Up until this point I felt quite good. I got the pine cones looking better than I thought they would and my inner Martha Stewart was waking up ready to come alive for the wreath assembly.

I read the instructions from Pinterest:

Step 1- Get some pretty pinecones

Step 2- Glue the big cones on the wire wreath

Step 3- Glue the small cones on the wire wreath

Step 4- Admire your wonderful creation.

The realistic steps were more like:

Step 1- Realize the pretty pine cones you picked are too big or too small for such a wreath and the ones used in the picture must have been picked out of a thousand to look that good and fit on the wreath so resort to plan B because this cone wreath ain’t happening.

Step 2- Gluing cones on a tiny wire is simply impossible. I used the same glue gun and the same wire wreath and there is no way in hell they would stick to that.

Step 3-  Resort to panic mode and don’t admit to your partner that a Pinterest wreath is baloney. Get a wire and cut your fingers attaching the cones to the wreath to prove you can in fact finish a Pinterest project!

Step 4- Successfully have no cones fall of the wreath and pray it stays like this until November. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the final product.

Do any of you have similar experience with Pinterest artsy projects? Leave a comment below or prove me wrong and tell me what I did wrong!

Love,

Leah