Ideas for Acorns

So yesterday Jan left a comment on my felted wool ball tutorial asking if I'd post how to make felted acorns. I didn't have any acorns so this morning Lucy and I went to the park to find some.

While I collected them Lucy sniffed around, and pulled on her leash whenever she saw something interesting, like oh say a squirrel- also collecting acorns (which I think resulted in me dropping more than I ended up taking home).

Nevertheless I collected a nice little pile.

It had been a long time since I'd collected acorns and on the drive home I started remembering how much fun I had crafting with them when I was a kid. That got me thinking about what else I do with them besides felting.

But first, I'll show you how to make the felted ones with the little wool balls I showed you how to make last week.

You only need acorn caps for this project. Add a little glue around the edge of the cap and attach it to a wool ball.

Pretty simple but boy do they look cute. Especially when you get a lot of them piled into a jar or bowl!

I also painted some of the acorns teal using craft paint. Once the paint was dry I sealed them with an acrylic matt finish. Bright green and teal are two of my favorite colors...

but they don't really say autumn.

I wanted something that would feel more autumnal but still match the teal, cream and brown in the living room. I have a lot of silver accents in there too, so I thought silver acorns might be nice. This time I used a sharpie paint marker, which I have to tell you was much quicker than using craft paint and a brush.

The last idea I had was to try decoupaging them. I had a tiny little oak leaf punch that I thought would be perfect! The acorns I collected were a mottled greenish brown so the first step was to paint them a deep chestnut color. Once the brown was dry I painted them with a basecoat of Mod Podge and let that dry. Then I podged the little leaves (which were punched out of a metallic copper paper) all the way around each acorn.

Finally I added another coat of Mod Podge to seal.

As much as I love bright colors I think these ones turned out to be my favorites.