Incredibly work intensive though not requiring of much brain power. I started by making circle stencils out of cardboard. Lacking a drawing compass, I hunted around the apartment for lids (mostly from plastic drug bottles) to trace circles of 7 varying sizes. Chalked the circle shapes onto felt, cut them out, stacked them up and adjusted number of circles so that the proportions of the stack resembled a pine cone. Unstacked them and cut the edges (my husband enquired "why do you have all those cogs?"), and skewered them with an embroidery needle. Anchored the bottom with a button knotted on the end, and loop at the top. Tedious but quite simple, really. Helps if you have a fondness for felt, which Oh Yes I do! More Felt Please!
But not for sale - I'd have to charge $50 for each 4" tall pine cone for the time and labor.
Also attempted was my first batch of iced sugar cookies. Rolling dough and cookie cutter cutting sounded easy enough; I was more interested in the icing challenge. I wanted to learn how to make cookies look like they do in bakeries (those cookies that cost $5 a pop) - perfectly smooth coverage, even edges and perhaps an artistic drip over the edge here and there. My icing recipe required a little adjustment to be the right consistency, and voila. I'm eager to up the complexity in icing art. Stay tuned.
