Santa Gnome Pinecone Ornament Tutorial

Everyone needs a few more tutorials in their life, right? I made these super easy Santa heads for my family...Last year I made everyone an ornament, so I figured I would go on with a tradition and make some more. These were so fast and easy I thought I would offer the tutorial on how to make them!

Okay, so for the supplies you'll need....

+ small pine cones, maybe 2 or 3 inches in height. Make sure they are a little bit closed still
+ polymer clay (you can use colored polymer too if you don't want to paint them)
+ a paint brush
+ craft glue
+ acrylic paint glitter
+ snow-tex for the Santa hat brim (or you can just sculpt your own little brim with clay.)

+ an eyepin (for hanging the ribbon from) or wire

1. Roll a ball of clay about 1/2" to 3/4" in diameter. This will be your Santa hat.

2. Sculpt the ball of clay into a cone hat shape.

3. Push the cone shape onto the top of the pine cone.

4. Sculpt the edges down over the "Santa head" and curl the top any which way you like! (For the brim of the hat you can take a long rolled skinny piece of clay and attach it, or use snow tex like I did.)

5. Make 4 little balls of clay. These will be your beard, mustache, and nose.

6. Sculpt the large piece into a beard shape, the two medium pieces into mustache shapes, and the tiniest piece will stay as is, it will be the nose.

7. Carefully push your beard into place onto the pine cone shingles. Place both mustache pieces over the beard, and then place the nose on last.

8. For texture on the beard and mustache I took the end of my paint brush and made little indents all over it. You can get creative with this.

9. STEP NINE NOT PICTURED- take a piece of looped wire, or eyepin (mostly used for jewelry purposes) and put it in the very top of the hat. This is what you will be stringing your ribbon from so you can hang it on your Christmas tree.

Once you have finished steps 1 through 8, bake it in your oven for 15 minutes at 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Once it is done baking, let it cool completely. After it has cooled, the hat should be attached to the pine cone. The beard and mustache and nose will carefully peel off, and you will want to re-glue these on so they stick. Let the glue dry before you start to paint.

For the brim of his hat, I used snow-tex. I just like the way is looks. But you can use a cotton ball, or leave it plain. You could even sculpt the brim of the hat on with clay.

Now is where your creativity can come in. I used glitter for the hats, but you can use acrylic paint and put a design on his hat. Or you can write the year, or someones name on it. I used white acrylic paint for his beard, and pink for the nose. Once everything was dry and set, I picked out some festive ribbon and attached it to the hook.

This is a really cute, easy, and fun project. Let me know if you decide to make one or two, I would love to see photos!!