Repurposed Pine Cone Christmas Tree

Trash to Treasure: Repurposed Pine Cone Christmas Tree – Upcycled Wood Towel Holder to Christmas Tree

A bag of pine cones, an old wooden towel holder, and some chicken wire make a unique natural Christmas tree!  When a friend gave me a bag of pine cones from his property, I knew I wanted to make something for Christmas out of them.  I first sprayed them with a can of Christmas “snow” thinking that I would just stack them in a basket.  But, that seemed too simple! I decided I wanted to either attach them to a Christmas tree or use them to decorate something.  Either way, I needed a way to attach them so I started by adding a heavy duty staple to the bottom of each pine cone and then attaching wire to the staple,

When I saw a roll of chicken wire in the barn I had an idea to make a Christmas tree form out of it and attach the pine cones to it.

But, I needed something to stabilize the wire.  I decided to try using an old wood towel holder.  First I had to cut the chicken wire to size for the holder…

I stapled the chicken wire to the bottom of the holder.  For the cutting step and base stapling step it is helpful to have someone help you hold the wire in place as it is very difficult to keep it flat and steady when working with it.  I thank my hubby who, as always, was nice enough to help me with these steps!

I then wired the side edges of the chicken wire together with short pieces of wire.  Here’s the finished form…

Next, I added each pine cone to the frame with the wire that was attached to the end of each pine cone.

This tree took almost 100 pine cones of varying sizes and measures 20” across at the base and is about 2” high.    Once I finished adding all the pine cones, I sprayed the entire tree again with snow.

After the tree was completely dry (about an hour) I moved it to the top of my dining room china cabinet.

I love that I was able to use the pine cones that were gifted to me and at the same time upcycle some wire and a towel holder to make this Christmas display for the dining room!

Here’s a fact I didn’t know but found fascinating.  Did you know there are male and female pine cones?  The ones we are most familiar with are the female pine cones (the cones I used to make this Christmas tree.)  The male pine cones are smaller and produce the pollen grains.  The female pine cones contain the eggs.  The pollen from the male pine cones is carried to the female pine cones by the wind.  I found one male pine cone in the bag.  Here’s a picture of them, the smaller one is the male and the larger one is the female.  Yes, that’s wire attached to the small male pine cone and you can see it on the top of the tree!