How to Clean Pine Cones for Crafting
The method below works for cleaning sticks as well as pinecones.
Ready to make some pine cone crafts? Not so fast! If you’re bringing pinecones in from the outdoors, you’ll want to clean them first. This post shows an easy way to get rid of the dust and debris filling those nooks and crannies, not to mention the bugs and spiders. Yuck! It’s a dirty job, but you’re gotta do it. You’ll be glad you did it.
Cleaning pinecones with this process is fairly simple and straightforward. The key is to give yourself lots of time.
Pro tip: Pinecones close up when they get wet. It takes almost 48 hours for a pinecone to fully dry and reopen.
So give yourself some time to prep the pinecones before you try to use them in a craft.
Ready to get started?
Steps for Cleaning Pine Cones
Collect pine cones and when you bring them in, immediately set them in the sink. This way if there is a tiny spider inside, you can immediately spray it down the drain. (Sorry, Charlotte.)
Fill your sink basin with enough water to submerge the pinecones. Add a very generous splash of white vinegar. About a 1/4 of a cup should do it.
Dump your pinecones into the vinegar bath. I like to spray down each one as I add it to the water.
Use tongs or a wooden spoon to continually prod and submerge the pinecones. They float, so they won’t stay submerged.
After repeatedly submerging each pinecone, leave them to sit in the vinegar bath for about half an hour.
Rinse the pinecones off and lay them on a tray to dry. It may take up to 48 hours for them to reopen.
clean but wet and closed up
dry and open after 40 hours from washing
Things to Note
It will probably take the pinecones up to two days to fully dry and reopen. Last Thanksgiving I tried taking a shortcut and just gave the pinecones a quick rinse, but they still closed up and took almost two days to dry and reopen. We almost didn’t have the Pinecone Glitter Place Cards shown here.
If you have access to lots of pinecones, you’ll probably be tempted to make lots of crafts with them. So do yourself a favor, and wash a whole bunch at one time. Then you’ll have a batch ready for your next crafting session, and they make great fall decor in the meantime. And obviously, they’ll last for years in the closet when you tuck away your fall decor.
Don’t want to go through all the fuss of cleaning pinecones? Order some instead through the link at the bottom of the post.
Be sure to save this tutorial for later.
The image below is pinnable. Thanks!
