Pinecone Fire Starters
Pinecone Fire Starters
Pinecone Fire Starters
Designed by Suzy Myers
All Rights Reserved
If you are looking for an inexpensive gift idea, make these pinecone fire starters for friends and family that have fireplaces. They are easy to make and placed inside a festive gift basket, make a lovely presentation.
You will need
Assorted Pinecones
Wax
Crayons
Wax Paper
Double boiler (or two sauce pans)
What you do
The crayons are used for color, so choose what colors that you would like your pinecones to be and prepare the crayons by removing the paper. It will take 4-5 crayons per box of wax to achieve a good strong color. I chose to make red, green, blue and white pinecones.
Start by using your double boiler or in my case, I used two sauce pans inside each other. I put about 2" of water in the bottom sauce pan and added a box of wax (cut in smaller pieces) to the top pan along with the red crayons. Allow the water to boil, and stir the wax until it has melted.
Cover your workspace with wax paper. Remove the pan from the heat. Allow it to cool for a few moments, then begin dipping the pinecones in the pan, coating them with a layer of wax. I found that each pinecone will need several coats of wax and as the wax begins to cool in the pan, the coats will get thicker on your pinecones. I found that each box of wax would generally cover about 3 large pinecones and 4 smaller ones.
At some point, your wax will get too cool to coat them properly. Just reheat the wax and repeat. Being the crazy thrifty person I am, I actually scraped up all the cooled puddles of wax from the wax paper and reheated them in order to get as much as I could out of each box of wax.
Repeat this process for each color. Be sure to clean all your utensils carefully between each color change so as not to contaminate your new color.
You will need
Assorted Pinecones
Wax
Crayons
Wax Paper
Double boiler (or two sauce pans)
What you do
The crayons are used for color, so choose what colors that you would like your pinecones to be and prepare the crayons by removing the paper. It will take 4-5 crayons per box of wax to achieve a good strong color. I chose to make red, green, blue and white pinecones.
Start by using your double boiler or in my case, I used two sauce pans inside each other. I put about 2" of water in the bottom sauce pan and added a box of wax (cut in smaller pieces) to the top pan along with the red crayons. Allow the water to boil, and stir the wax until it has melted.
Cover your workspace with wax paper. Remove the pan from the heat. Allow it to cool for a few moments, then begin dipping the pinecones in the pan, coating them with a layer of wax. I found that each pinecone will need several coats of wax and as the wax begins to cool in the pan, the coats will get thicker on your pinecones. I found that each box of wax would generally cover about 3 large pinecones and 4 smaller ones.
At some point, your wax will get too cool to coat them properly. Just reheat the wax and repeat. Being the crazy thrifty person I am, I actually scraped up all the cooled puddles of wax from the wax paper and reheated them in order to get as much as I could out of each box of wax.
Repeat this process for each color. Be sure to clean all your utensils carefully between each color change so as not to contaminate your new color.
