Autumn is a great time of year to do some nature inspired crafts. If your child likes foraging for treasures or going on scavenger hunts, turning their finds into craft projects can be great fun. These Autumn Pine Cone Animals are perfect for when rainy days prevent them from getting outdoors.
I made these cute pine cone and polymer clay hedgehogs for the kids last year after seeing similar by Kidley.com on Pinterest.
This year my kids wanted me to come up with some more woodland animals using our pine cones. So with a simple addition of some polymer clay, I came up with this pinecone fox and an owl.
If you want to try making some yourself, with or without your child!, they are both really simple. Based on using a small heart cookie cutter to get the polymer clay shapes.
Scroll down to watch the video tutorial, or pin it for later!
Pin Autumn Pine Cone Animals for later!
The full tutorial is in the Youtube video below, but I have a few hints and tips for you if you want to give it a go.
What You Will Need To Make Your Pine Cone Animals
- Pinecones
- Polymer clay
- Grease proof paper
- Small heart cookie cutter
- Small rolling pin (a big will work just fine too!)
- Maybe some glue!
- A lined baking tray and an oven
Top Tips For Making Your Pine Cone animals
- Any size pine cone will do, but you may need to scale down your polymer clay additions.
- Soften the polymer clay in your hands by rolling into a ball. This makes it much easier for kids to be able to roll out the clay independantly.
- Roll out the lighter colours first. Or make sure you or your child washes their hands after using a darker colour. White polymer clay especially will pick up colour residue from your hands. Something I have learnt from experience!
- When rolling out your polymer clay, do it on some greaseproof paper. This helps prevent it sticking to surfaces you don’t want it to.
- If rolling out small pieces for the noses and eyes is too fiddley for little ones, just use googley eyes and/or pom poms. But make sure you glue these on AFTER the baking process.
- Read the polymer clay instructions carefully regarding baking. Different brands may vary, and you don’t want to overbake your clay. Don’t forget the clay doesn’t go hard until it’s gone back to room temperature, so avoid handling until it’s completely cooled down.
- Pine cones tend to expand when they are heated. This means your perfectly placed polymer clay pieces may fall off during the baking process. Make sure you have your baking sheet completley covered with greaseproof paper to prevent them sticking, and you may need your glue gun to hand afterwards!
How You Make THem!
Watch my little video tutorial on how to make a pine cone and polymer cay fox and owl!
That’s it, very simple, Autumn pine cone animals. What other variations can you come up with?
If you, like us, love scavenging this time of year for nature’s treasures, I’d love to see what you turn them into!
Kerry x
Nature Inspired Crafts is one of my 50 Crafts To Try Before You’re 10! My open ended, free challenge aimed at injecting a little creativity into family life. If you want to be part of it just fill in your details below.
6 Comments
These are so cutewish I knew about it when I was working as a registered child minder#kifsandkreativty@_karendennis
These are so cute. I always bring them home and then dont know what to do with them lol #kidsandkreativity
These are absolutely adorable! I love the idea of making little animals out of pine cones. What a lovely autumn activity #kidsandkreativity
These are so frickin’ cute and yet so simple, what a brilliant idea! My pair will love having a go at making them. Thank you! #kidsandkreativity
Nice idea to combine the pine cones and clay, and the results look great! A hedgehog could be a good one as well, and perhaps a wolf 🙂 x #KidsandKreativity
Oh I’m just loving the hedgehogs! We usually make a little display of pinecone Christmas trees for the festive season but I think we will make some forest critters too. #KidsandKreativity