Do you have magnolia trees where you are?

We are in the deep south and these large, glorious smelling trees are abundant. The giant leaves make awesome canvases and they drop these interesting little seed pods, resembling pine cones.

We love using nature‘s free art materials and decided to collect a few dozen of these pods from my parent’s farm for some fun painting.

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As I do with cardboard projects, I mixed a bit of white into our tempera paint for better opacity. We painted the pods with various colors as we held the perfect little built in handles.

As the pods were drying, I felt we needed to do something else with them and take advantage of that “handle”.

We wrapped the “handle” in a couple colors of yarn with a simple knotted loop for hanging. These lovely painted pods were hung on our DIY tree of branches that we use for various holidays. These pods would make great ornaments for a Thankful Tree, Christmas or Easter. Don’t they look like little painted Easter eggs?!

Pin for later!

Update: I see 18 preschoolers in my art room every other week for only 15 minutes and needed a quick open ended activity. It was a few weeks before Christmas and I had plenty of these pods left over so we made a sparkly version! See the pretty pods below!

I used the glitter I had in my classroom but this alternative would be better for the environment!

FREE art materials are the best! Looking for more NATURE ART ideas? Check out our Mixed Media Salt Dough Nests, Paper Plate Nature Collages, or our Nature Shadow Boxes Part 2!