Keeping with the theme all things decorating, I am going to show you how to make your own cotton stems today. I've been looking at these for a while and couldn't quite find the price point I wanted, so I did a little research and found that you could make your own fairly easy. This is the way I found to be most practical.
The materials you'll need:
Pinecones
Dry branches -I found this bunch at Michael's (but you could just gather some from the yard)
Cotton balls
Hot glue gun
Wire cutters
And I ended up not using the scissors but changing to an old potato peeler, you really just need something that can get under the pinecone pieces to help get under the pine cone prices for a good grip to pull them out.
I started on the bottom of the pine cone..
The first couple rows are really easy just pluck out.
This is where my potato peeler came in handy, I was able to wedge it down by the root to get a firm grip and yank it out.
After stripping the pinecones of its scales, you want to gather them in groups of four in like size. The scales on the bottom of the pinecone tend to be larger and get smaller the farther up the cone.
Now it's time to unroll your cotton balls, I found the easiest way to do this is push your finger through the middle of the cotton ball to unveil the end and unroll. Then you'll want to loosely roll it back up and play with it until you get a natural shape.
With your hot glue gun in hand you will want to take four of the spines and glue them to the bottom of your cotton ball in a cross shape.
Once you have several of your cotton balls put together it is time to glue them onto your branches.
I like to put several on each branch and one at the very top.
And this is the finished product, I am very happy with the way it turned out.
