Nature Walk Trees

What comes to mind when I think of "natural" materials is any material that I find out in nature.  I opened my front door and proceeded to go on a nature walk.  I picked up branches, pine cones, pine needles, acorns and anything else I thought I could use for my project.  I made use of my branches by making a twig tree.

 I felt like this twig tree needed a couple companions so I created one out of pine cones and the other out of pine needles. Fun, right?  A very simple project that requires very little money to complete.  It also makes use of the materials that are literally falling out of the sky.  They are perfect pieces to display at this time of year with Thanksgiving and Christmas fast approaching. 

They are very easy to make, but I'm warning you that they do require some time.  I'm not going to lie I thought I had carpal tunnel by the time I was finished.  I used foam cones for the base of the trees and started gluing away.  For the twig tree I used small twigs and cut them into small pieces and glued them around the cone and every other row I would insert the twigs into the cone.  Sound easy enough?

The pine cone tree turned out by surprise.  I tore apart several pine cones and then used the pieces and overlapped them on the cone.  You will need to start from the top down.  I started from the bottom and that didn't work out so well.  It started to flair out in the wrong direction.  I started over and went from the top down and it started to flair out again, but I thought it looked pretty cool.  To finish it off I just cut off the rest of the cone and pushed a dowel rod into the foam and made a base for it.  Then wrapped it with wire.
The pine needle tree was very easy, but again time consuming.  Collect pine needles or find gullible children to do this for you.  Then start placing them into the tree.  I used pine cone pieces again for the base to complete the tree.  I really like how they all turned out with each one having a unique look.