Ribbon Pinecone Ornament

This ornament is hardly new. I’m pretty confident it’s been around for generations, in fact. But it’s a standby for a reason. It’s just so pretty!

You will need:

1 medium styrofoam egg
3 yards of 1/2″ ribbon (including some different colors makes a really pretty contrast)
a whole mess of pins (the short little sequin pins work great)
white craft glue
thinner ribbon for the hanger

Cut all your ribbon into 1 inch lengths. The very bottom of the pinecone will be visible through the “leaves” (What are those pinecone parts called anyway? Ah! Google says they’re scales!)so we have to cover it by just pinning a piece of ribbon over the pointy end.

I found it worked best to dunk the pins in glue before sticking them into the styrofoam. The kind of foam these eggs come is fairly porous, which means the pins go in easily, but they can also work their way out. The glue fixes that problem.

Take one piece of ribbon at a time and fold the short ends up to meet one of the long ends. This should make a little point, and also make it so that all the raw edges are together on one side. Pin this onto the styrofoam, overlapping the bottom covering piece.

There’s no right way to do this – remember all that talk from yesterday about nature being messy – and a lot of people like it better when it’s not lined-up-with-a-ruler perfect. After a little bit of practice I found my own technique. You just want to use the scales to cover up the pins and raw edges of what came before it. I kind of positioned them so that the side points of each scale were touching, and then I’d take a half step up and to the right so that the bottom point of the next row would cover all that up. Oh goodness I’m so over-complicating things. Just pin the ribbon points on in a way that covers any messiness.

When you get to the very top, things get so tight that the ribbon triangles can be too big to work with. I just folded the edges under before pinning on the last couple of rows.

Keep pinning on leaves until you get the whole thing covered, and then pin on a couple more so that the remaining pins can be covered by the ribbon hanger.

Pin down one end of ribbon, loop it around and fold the other end under before pinning it in place.

This could be really pretty made out of all one color, but I love the contrast here just in using different styles of ribbon from the same color family.

Related posts:

Faux Bois Ornaments Visions of Sugarplums Clay Wise Men Ornament Paper Twist Nativity

17 thoughts on “Ribbon Pinecone Ornament”

  1. This must be an American Standby cos I've never seen them before. Can you do a PDF Download for all the woodland tutorials, I think I might work on some of them over next year.They are beautiful.How many sugar cookies did Atti eat?Oh how weird.. my word is ovenon…

  4. love this ornament..I love pine cones and fall laves, as we do not have them in the part of India where I live..i made fall leaves for myself which pass beautifully as real ones, now I'll have pine cones, too! thanx a ton!

  6. Sorry Reese, I get in a zone… should have asked for permission, plus should be more observant of blogger/internet copy rules….I removed the pine cone ribbon item… enjoyed your blog and recipes and crafts nevertheless…

  8. I saw this ages ago on the Martha Stewart site, but it sounded so complicated and was without almost any pictures to help illustrate each step. Thanks for making it look (and therefor BE) so much easier! 🙂

  9. I made some of these about 10 years ago at an ornament party I went to and then lost the directions. I'm so happy that I found this through you. Thanks bunches

  10. I'm trying to figure out what size the eggs actually are…you say "Medium" and you use 1/2 inch ribbon…I was picturing something on a larger scale until I saw the ribbon size. Can you help at all?

  12. Pingback: crea…. | ~ * Pagan Ouderschap / Pagan Parenting * ~
  15. Pingback: Make This Year’s Christmas Decor with Ribbons | Interior Design Blogs

Comments are closed.