How to Easily Clean & Prepare Pinecones for Crafts and Your Decor

This post contains affiliate links.

An easy and simple way to clean pinecones to use in your holiday home decor, crafts and diy projects, including wreaths and garland.

Pinecones, acorns, seed pods, antlers, cotton and other found treasures are wonderful frugal finds from nature to decorate your house inside and out. The great news is that they are free and all you have to do is go out and find them. Today I am sharing and easy way to clean pinecones to use for your home decor, crafts and more.

How to clean pinecones

There are many ways to clean pinecones, including soaking them in solutions of vinegar, bleach and other cleaning solutions. I am lazy and I wanted to skip that, this easy method is all about baking off the dirt and bugs and only takes 90 minutes.

Cleaning Pinecones

1. Gather your pinecones.

2. With a brush, clean pinecones of dust, debris and needles.

3. Place pinecones on a parchment lined baking tray, make sure to space them out so that the air can circulate around them. The parchment will help with the sap.

4. Bake for 90 minutes on 200F. This will kill off all of the bugs, mold and other creatures.

4. Remove pinecones from over, let cool and then use in all of your crafts.

Notes and Tips

A. Do not turn the heat on higher than 200F, pinecones will burn and could start a fire. The melted sap is a pain to clean off of your baking pan so be sure to use parchment paper or aluminum foil to line your pan.

B. There are lots, and lots of other ways to clean your pinecones, I chose this way because I didn’t want to get mine wet, which causes them to close up and then takes way longer to bake them.

C. If your pinecones and damp, like mine, they will open up a lot from baking them.

Why Should You Clean Pinecones?

Pinecones are the perfect thing to use for holiday crafts and in your home decor but they are also the home too little creatures, like bugs, and spiders and they contain dirt, dust and more.

What Can You Do with Pinecones?

Pinecones can be strung together for make garland for the fireplace, door or for your Christmas tree
to make a wreath
to place in bowls and baskets or in a table arrangement
to make cinnamon pinecones
to make place card holders
to make ornaments

Pinecones are beautiful just the way they are but you can also paint them, or sprinkle them with glitter or faux snow as well, the possibilities are endless.

I hope this easy method to clean your pinecones is helpful. I would love to hear more about how you decorate with pinecones, please share your holiday crafts and decor ideas and links in the comments.

For more holiday decorating or DIY ideas check out my Christmas Pinterest Boards.

This post contains affiliate links.

Comments

Chalking Up Success says

November 4, 2020 at 6:15 pm

Great post! I love using pine cones in my decor and usually don't bother cleaning them – oops, perhaps I should! Pinned. Thank you also for including my DIY wood pedestal tray in your post today Elizabeth!

Unknown says

November 4, 2020 at 6:41 pm

This is SO helpful! I usually buy my pinecones just because it's easy, so now I can just go for a walk and collect them. Thanks so much!!