On our many nature walks, we collect lots of things that we find along the way. Some are for our fairy houses. Some are for the nature table. And some go into our garden. One of the things we have a lot of is pinecones. Lots and lots of pinecones. They range from little bitty to 9(ish) inches tall.
Don’t you just love pinecones? They are so pretty and such a wonderful addition to any autumn and winter décor.
My mom had the idea of using the pinecones to make fire starters. So I started researching how to make them. I wanted to use beeswax because it’s organic and we loooove things to be organic around here. I bought a couple pounds and a nice, working crock pot at the thrift store.
Scott really likes this whole fire starter idea and has been helping me a lot with it. We melted down the beeswax and did a bunch of different tests with the pinecones to see what we liked best—just the tips of the petals, the whole thing, and just the bottom. We finally settled on dipping the entire pinecone quickly, ending up with just a light coating of beeswax on the pinecone. It has the perfect satin sheen. We attached a piece of twine to the top, which is for lighting the fire starter and also doubled as something to help me dip the pinecone into the beeswax.
We also found the needles from one of the palm trees in our front yard to dip in the beeswax. I dipped about 1/3 of the needle for some and the entire needle for others. It looks great both ways. The bottoms of them are squiggly, which makes them look really cool. I didn’t even know palm trees had needles until they started falling in my garden.
So, that’s that for the pinecones. I have about a dozen completed and one hundred left to do, plus whatever else we collect. These are going to make fabulous Christmas gifts!
