Borax Crystal Pine Cone - result! (and failure?)

The brown bit is the pine
cone

Hurray! It worked better than I expected. I opened the jar with the greatest of ease and the aid of some hot water. The picture over there on the left is what I saw when I opened it - solid crystals with the pine cone embedded. 

Borax crystal pinecone on
the Christmas tree 

Here, on the right, is a photo of the pine cone on the tree taken using the flash. It doesn't do it justice...neither does the below photo without the flash. It's a twinkly, sparkly, possibly toxic, beautiful, crystally piece of nature.

The flat bit from where it
was against the side of the jar
(also what it looked like
without flash)

Useful information: Apparently "Borax" is no longer available in shops in the UK because of EU regulations. Borax substitute can be used for this (and the other similar projects) but yields less impressive crystals, I am told. 

Other points to note: I do feel this is kind of cheating as it was not a craft we did today and the Zeds were not involved at all. Z1 had a plan to make candy canes out of paper but we got distracted by Elfing ourselves and then it was pretty much time for bed. You may judge whether I can consider myself to have failed in my aim to conquer Christmas. I think I am going to let myself off the hook and say I have continued in the spirit of the project.