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Sparkly pine cones are such a thing now. You can glitter your face. You can glitter your eyeliner. You can wear glittery gold lamé dresses and gem sweaters. You can deck your house in tinsel. You can even buy bedazzled, sequined, glistening snow boots. Figures, then, that pine cones would follow. Because if it exists in nature or in the great superabundance of human creations, it can be covered in glitter. If you don't believe me, here are a few examples of things that should not be covered in glitter, but somebody covered them in glitter: disposable cutlery (waiter, there are little flecks of inedible glitter in my soup); hard liquor (sparkly vomit!); and the pink glitter toilet seat (after eating and drinking glitter, I'm sticking with a digestive theme).

 

So pine cones. While most of the year you want to keep them out of the house, the holiday season invites a special whimsy. The first approach, and may I add that I consider it to be a reasonable one, is to gild the pine cones. This involves brushing the edges of the pine cones with gold acrylic craft paint. Painting just the edges gives the pine cones a shadowy look of depth, which is urbane-looking when the cones are piled into a tall glass hurricane lantern (unlit, understandably).

 

Next we have something a bit more Las Vegas, if you know what I am saying. Laura from the DIY blog The Elegant Nest seems to have dipped the edges of some pine cones in glue and then rolled them in glitter. They look frosted, which is exactly how I like my cupcakes, I mean pine cones. Believe it or not, there are a lot of DIY bloggers making glitter pine cones, and hers are just the prettiest, and I say that in all seriousness. See for yourself.

 

Then again, you can always brush the tips of some pine cones with Mod Podge and then sprinkle them with Epsom salt. The result is a very realistic snowy look. If you're not one for wreaths, you can make a nice homey (of or pertaining to the home, not the greeting to an urban male buddy) door hanging of these "snow" covered pine cones.

 

Chaya Kurtz originally wrote this story for Networx.com. It is reprinted with permission here.

 

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