This post is sponsored by Plaid Enterprises.

Have you gotten much snow yet where you live? If not, now is the time to forage for pinecones to craft these painted swan ornaments! We love how versatile pinecones are for crafting – a couple of years ago, we used the smaller variety to make a trio of festive ornaments, and more recently we made these colorful painted owls. With Thanksgiving coming up, we’ve had turkey crafts on the brain and it occurred to us that swans would be another bird we could craft out of pinecones!

As always, we pulled out of handy Folk Art Acrylic Paint and even just after painting our pinecones white, they started looking like swans already. With just a few more supplies that you likely already have in your stash, the transformation was complete! We, of course, had to make seven of them so that we could have seven swans a-swimming, but you can craft as many as you like. And not only do these swans make lovely ornaments for your tree, but you can also use them as fun gift toppers or little puppets for kids to play with this holiday season! Keep reading to see the full instructions below.

• Folk Art Acrylic Paint
• Paintbrushes
• Pinecones
• Cupcake papers (white and gold)
• String
• Hot glue gun
• Pipe cleaners
• Black paper

Step 1
Paint your pinecones white and let dry completely. This may take a couple of coats to get it into all the nooks and crannies. Another thing to think about is selecting pinecones that have a nice oblong or oval shape when held sideways. If the pinecones are too flat or open, they won’t look as much like swans.

Step 2
To add the swan’s neck, hot glue the end of a white pipe cleaner onto the bottom of a pinecone. Gently shape the pipe cleaner into a slight curve, and then bend into a head shape, twisting the excess around the neck to secure. Use the excess pipe cleaner to fill in the head area, bending it to fit, and then cutting off the excess.

Step 3
To make the swan’s wings, we cut D shapes out of the ruffled edges of white cupcake papers. Hot glue onto each side of the swan’s pinecone body.

Step 4
For the beak, apply a small dab of hot glue onto the end of the swan’s face and stick a small piece of golden cupcake paper on top. Use scissors to trim the excess gold paper off so that it resembles a beak. For the eye, cut a small circle (with an eyelash, if you like!) out of black paper and hot glue onto the swan’s head as well.

Note: You can repeat this step so that both sides of the swan’s head are complete, or skip it, but then you’ll have to make sure the swan hangs the right way on your Christmas tree.

Step 5
Cut a piece of string about 5″ long and tie into a loop. Use hot glue to secure into the top of the pinecone, doing this closer to the swan’s neck than tail so that it hangs as evenly as possible.

Happy crafting!