Black Pine Cone Wreath

Author by Amanda Davis on May 15, 2010 Updated on July 16, 2019

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I wasn’t sure if the proper spelling was pine cone or pinecone, so I consulted the dictionary. Pine cone it is. At any rate, I’ve been meaning to make a pine cone wreath for quite a while. In fact I started on it a couple of weeks ago and was finally able to finish it yesterday. This pine cone wreath is actually part of a wall collage I’m doing in my dining room. I have a great big wonderful wall just begging for something to fill it. The wall collage includes my mirror redo and a wall hanging I made from my denim fabric flowers as well. I hope to reveal the whole thing soon, but I have a few more projects to complete first.

Meanwhile, here’s my black pine cone wreath. I bought this wonderful burlap banner roll a couple of months ago, and I think it worked perfectly with the wreath. It was a great additional to my DIY wall art. Hope you like it!

NOTE: I used several different sized pine cones. I had some that were long and slender, and some that were short and fat. When I didn’t have enough, I went outside and gathered some smaller ones from a pine tree to use as filler. I read that if you soaked the pine cones in water over night they would close up (which is true), so that you could insert them into the frame, eliminating the use of floral wire. While this did work, it was not a solution for filling the entire frame as the fatter pine cones wouldn’t fit into the frame using this method. After the wet pine cones are inserted into the frame, you allow them to dry for several days and they will open back up again, permanently holding them in the wreath frame.

Black Pine Cone Wreath

You will need
wire wreath
pine cones, assorted sizes
floral wire
hot glue gun
black satin spray paint
clear glaze spray
wide burlap

What you do

There are a couple of ways to attach the pine cones to the wreath frame. You can soak them so that they close up, then insert them in the frame, allow them to dry and they will open up again. This is time consuming, it took mine over a week to dry completely and open back up. You can also attach them with floral wire, which takes a lot less time.

The photo below (sorry, from my cell phone) shows the pine cones closed up after a good soaking in a bucket of water. I inserted them, butt end first, into the frame and left them to dry.

Well over a week later, they were finally dry and had opened back up, see picture below.

I cut lengths of floral wire, about 6-8″ long, depending on the size of the pine cone, and inserted the wire into the pine cone’s scales. I then gave the wire a twist or two to hold it in place on the pine cone. Then simply start adding pine cones to the frame, twisting the floral wire at the back of the frame to hold the pine cones in place.

I still had quite a few gaps by the time I ran out of pine cones, so I went outside and gathered some small ones to use as filler. You just keep adding pine cones until you are happy with the look.

use your hot glue gun to secure the pine cones to each other. Once it feels sturdy, take it outside and lay it on some newspaper, then spray paint it. I gave it about 2-3 coats of black and 2 coats of clear glaze.

To add the burlap hanger, lay the wreath on the ground and run the burlap banner through the opening in the wreath. You will need a considerable length in order to tie the large bow. I didn’t measure, but I would guess that length was a good 4-5 feet. Then just tie a large bow and trim the hanging ends as desired. Hang on the wall!

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