I was hiking in the foothills yesterday and noticed small pine cones that resembled both little pineapples and Christmas trees. It seemed they might be useful for wraps. So I gathered a number of them over the course of the hike. My left cargo pocket was so full the cones began to poke my leg.
This morning I took the cones and cut them in half on my scroll saw. Then I fired up my airbrushes and gave them some quick coloring: green on the left and red on the right.
The next step was to determine what was the best background paper to show the cone-trees. I had imagined it would be plain white. But a large remaining piece of shiny black shopping bag turned out to be the best. I used hot glue to seal up the black paper, which is very thick, needs to be fixed firmly, and does not look particularly good with lots of tape.
I then glued on the cones. The resulting wrap has a subdued holiday look, with dimensional richness.