DIY - Halloween Pine Cones And Vampire Bats Centerpiece

Halloween Centerpiece

Autumn Colored Pine Cones and Vampire Bats

What you will need for this project:

Pine cones 
Water Bucket
Dollar store poster paints
Autumn colored paints
Gold glitter
Glue
Paint brushes or dollar store cotton swabs
Planter or other container
Autumn leaves or other natural fall forest floor materials


Note: You can choose to spray paint your pine cones with autumn colors as that is much faster but I hand painted mine for some more ornate pine cones as you will see below. I don't recommend dipping pine cones in paint because that amount of paint will tend to make the pine cones close up and dry closed and it can be very messy.

Also, see the bottom section of this page to see how to make the Vampire Bats and what you will need.

I collected some natural Fall materials that were on the ground around my yard during the change of seasons. I'm not exactly sure what it is that I've collect but any Fall leaves or similar materials will work well for your centerpiece.

My collected Fall leaves.

I'm using a planter-holder instead of planter because I like the looks of it. You just need any type of bowl, vase, planter, container you think will look nice for your Halloween centerpiece.

I used a paper grocery shopping bag to collect my pine cones. The large paper bag was quite full as I needed a lot of them to fill my planter-holder. 

I washed the pine cones in a bucket of warm soapy water to clean them of dirt and get the bugs out, and there are bugs in them so make sure you wash them well.

When pine cones get wet they close up. Let them dry for a couple of days or lay them in the sun and then they will open up again when dry.

Remove any seeds or other debris from the dried pine cones. Otherwise the paint will get stuck on them and that gets annoying and messy. I used some tweezers to pull the seeds out before painting them.

I painted my open pine cones with dollar store poster paints. I mixed yellow with a touch of red to get my orange color. And I just used plain old black and plain old red for some other pine cones. 

You can use small paint brushes if you like but I just use dollar store cotton swabs. They are disposable, cheap, and no brushes to clean up. They do tend to unravel pretty quickly but I just grab another one. I also use both sides of the swab after one side has been used and dried.

So with a box of 350, I get 700 painting tips for $1.

I unraveled some dollar store cotton balls to make spooky cobwebs.

For these pine cones I used a lot of Fall colors. I used a combination of burgundy, brown, orange, red, and yellows. I also used paint that I had instead of the dollar store poster paints.

I just kept painting, and dabbing one color, let it dry, and then start with another color, and then another. You can see it is very free form.

I think they look lovely.

I also add some gold glittered pine cones to the group for some Fall sparkle. I dab some glue on the pine cones and then poured the glitter over them. Repeating the process until they are a sparkly gold.

Glittering gold pine cone.


Onward to what you will need for the Black Vampire Bats:

Toilet paper rolls
Black paint
Red paint
Paper shopping bag handle
Scissors
Paint brushes or cotton swabs

Cut the toilet paper rolls diagonally along the marked wrapping of the roll.

Paint both sides of the toilet paper roll black.

Curl the edges inward on both sides and fold - lengthwise.

Fold in half with a crease but let it be free to open on its own. This is the bat's wings.

Now to make the bat head. Cut off one handle of a paper shopping bag.

Cut the handle in half - lengthwise.

Cut into smaller pieces. These pieces will be rolled and used as the bats' heads.

Paint black and then wrap it inward.

Glue it closed.

Dab dots of red paint for eyes.

Red eyes on the bat's head.

Glue the bat's head to the wings.

You've now got some really cool and scary Halloween bats.

I mixed all the different colored pine cones (red, orange, black, gold, multi-colored) in the holder.

Scattered my Fall leaves around the holder on my corner table. 

Then I placed the vampire bats in and around the pine cones, added some unraveled cotton balls for cobwebs to finish off my Halloween centerpiece.