You can make your own miniature fairy garden mushrooms using acorn caps and twigs from your yard! I was inspired by the new book Crafting with Nature, which is my new favorite gardening and crafting book. The first thing I did was to gather acorn caps and twigs from our backyard. We had a crazy amount...Read More

A former Lego worker moved away from plastic and towards chipmunks.

I love this time of year! The season is changing once again and autumn is almost here! This morning is the first morning that has really had a chill to it! I could see my breath as I went out to do my morning chores. Now I'm wrapped in a cozy blanket enjoying a warm cup of cocoa. I love decorating for autumn because I can utilize so many natural elements that are already on hand. Two things that I happen to have in abundance are branches from a recent landscaping project and acorns. I decided I wanted to create a wreath for my front door with them and I made sure to document it so I could share it with you. I hope you enjoy it! First, an important note about using acorns for crafting: Before you use acorns to decorate in your home, you must get rid of any outdoor pests, which are living in the acorns and which will invade your home and cause a yucky mess. The easiest way to do this is to heat them up. I started with green acorns picked right off the tree. I spread them on a cookie sheet and baked them at 350F for 20 minutes. Check them after 10 minutes and roll them around a bit, so they cook evenly. Let them cool and then you're done! How to make a Twig & Acorn Wreath: 1. Begin your wreath by cutting up a lot of nice straight, thin branches. I got mine from a lilac tree that we removed from our yard. Cut them into approximately two sizes one longer and one a little shorter. Don't worry about making the lengths exact; it will look nicer if there is a slight variation. 2. Next, cut a piece of sturdy cardboard into a circle about the size you want your wreath to be. You want this to be tough corrugated type, a cereal box is not going to be strong enough. I traced around two clay pots to help me get an even circular shape. 3. Beginning with the longer twigs, use a hot glue gun to secure them to the cardboard until it is evenly covered. 4. Use the shorter twigs to fill in on top. Pay attention to any places where the cardboard shows and be sure to cover with a twig or two. It looks pretty fun with the just the twigs, but it's about to get even more fun! Time for the acorns! 5. Hot glue the acorns around the center of the wreath. This helps cover any view of the cardboard that might have been showing in the center and really makes this wreath stand out. 6. Once the glue has cooled and everything is set, use a soft under the finger nail type scrub brush to gently brush the wreath off. Brush in the direction of the twigs all the way around. This will get most of those stringy hot glue webs off. I love how this turned out! I used a cute fall ribbon to hang it on my door and I think it looks great! I haven't had too many visitors since making this wreath, but those who've stopped by have almost always complimented it! It feels good to create! I especially like creating something awesome out of things that are just lying around. For another great wreath tutorial check out how to make grapevine wreaths HERE. This post was featured on these great blogs: Shared at these great blogs: BFF Open House at The Answer is Chocolate Home Sweet Home at The Charm of Home Clever Chicks Blog Hop at The Chicken Chick Sunday Linky at Suburbs Mama Silver Pennies Sunday at Finding Silver Pennies Super Sunday Link Party at Who Needs a Cape? Creative Home and Garden Hop at Little Homestead on the Hill Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do Monday Funday at Lines Across Mostly Homemade Mondays at Homegrown and Healthy What'd You Do This Weekend at Tumbleweed Contessa Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage The Backyard Farming Connection Link Party Tuesday at AtoZebra Celebrations Tuesdays with a Twist at Stone Cottage Adventures Rock N Share at The Shady Porch Down Home Blog Hop at Tilly's Nest Home and Garden Thursday at A Delightsome Life Treasure Hunt Thursday at From My Front Porch To Yours Lovely Ladies Linky at Life with the Crust Cut Off The HomeAcre Hop at Black Fox Homestead Feature Friday at Blissful and Domestic From the Farm at Sunny Simple Life Farmgirl Friday at Deborah Jean's Dandelion House Cottage Style Party at Lavender Garden Cottage Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts Feathered Nest Friday at French Country Cottage Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest Masterpiece Monday at Boogieboard Cottage Made By You Monday at Skip To My Lou Work it Wednesday at The Happy Housie Strut Your Stuff at Six Sisters' Stuff

You can make your own miniature fairy garden mushrooms using acorn caps and twigs from your yard! I was inspired by the new book Crafting with Nature, which is my new favorite gardening and crafting book. The first thing I did was to gather acorn caps and twigs from our backyard. We had a crazy amount...Read More

Kniha Dubánek ve světě lidí popisuje úžasné vánoční dobrodružství dubánka Borka v lidském domě, kde se také potká s kocourem Elvisem

12 ADORABLE ACORN CRAFTS

Owls, babies, and tea parties - - you 'll find all of these and more with these acorn crafts for kids.

Make fall nature crafts with acorns, leaves, pinecones, walnuts, and more with this list of autumn nature craft ideas for kids and adults!

You can make your own miniature fairy garden mushrooms using acorn caps and twigs from your yard! I was inspired by the new book Crafting with Nature, which is my new favorite gardening and crafting book. The first thing I did was to gather acorn caps and twigs from our backyard. We had a crazy amount...Read More

Holistic toys, crafts and parenting to nurture your soul.

Made from acorns and twigs, this fun nature craft can be hung inside or out! Pair it with a nature walk to gather supplies for a fun family activity.

Holistic toys, crafts and parenting to nurture your soul.

If you’ve played on Pinterest enough, you’ve likely seen one of Petr Vaclavek’s world-famous acorn elves! The first time I laid eyes on them, I was smiling ear to ear! They are fun, silly, absolutely unique and incredibly brilliant! I couldn’t stop flipping from one image to the next! And the best part? The idea was born out of a simple brainstorming session of how to make art from the collections of materials brought home from nature walks with his kids! How wonderful! If you want to see his site, click here! You won’t be disappointed! Of course, as soon as I saw Vaclavek’s beautiful acorn elves, I just knew that I had to plan an Acorn Art Night at our house! The hardest part was waiting for autumn so the acorns would fall. Ha! The best part? An unexpected road trip to see my sister in North Carolina in October meant that we could collect acorns from all different states along the way! By the time we started this project, we had acorns of all different colors and sizes! All said and done, we had an absolute blast making our own acorn art, but we learned a lot along the way! So, in this blog post, we will share some of our best tips and hints to help you make your “Acorn Art Family Night” a huge hit! In this blog post, you’ll find: Our List of Materials Our Favorite Tips Our Scary Surprise Pics of Our Final Pieces Acorns (some with hats! (also known as the stem and capule)) Small Sticks or Branches Small Acorn Hats (Capules) for Feet Google Eyes Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks Sanding Block or Sanding Paper Paint and Painting Supplies (optional) Bowls, Cups, Plates, Canvas, or Other Supplies for Mounting Additional supplies or materials could be needed, based on your design, so you may need to brainstorm what you want to include in your piece. When we first sat down to create our acorn art, I didn’t really think through what I planned to create. We just dumped a bunch of nature art materials on the table and jumped in. The more we built our pieces, the more we realized what materials we would need. #1 – So, my first tip would be to take some time to brainstorm how you want to build your art piece to make sure you have all your supplies picked up ahead of time. Once we started gluing our pieces together, I realized that we were having a hard time connecting the bodies and heads due to the remains of the style, better known as the pokey part at the bottom of the acorn. That’s where a sanding block or sanding paper come in handy. #2 – Before you try to glue your pieces together, sand down the remains of the style for a better fit. We found that using a hot glue gun worked best for this project, however, as we went along, I found that often times I needed to use a small stick and wipe excess glue off the acorns and art pieces before attaching them to each other. Because you are working with such small materials, excess glue will be very noticeable. #3 – So, my third tip is to have something handy to use while gluing in order to quickly and efficiently remove excess hot glue before it dries. Make sure it’s something small enough that you can easily move it around your tiny pieces of art. (Additionally, we also made sure the hot glue gun was handled by adults only.) As you can tell from our pictures, we painted some of our acorns, specifically the fishing bobbers on one of the pieces. #4 –When painting the acorns, we generally found it easier to remove the hat (capule) and paint it separately and then hot glue the hat back onto the acorn. #5 – This also leads me to our next tip… We glued every hat (capule) on every acorn, even if they initially felt secure. The two pieces would often come apart during the process, so it was easier to attach them securely with glue before attaching them to our art. Some of our supplies had to be gathered outside of our nature walk. #6 – When gathering extra supplies for your art, don’t forget to think thrifty! We shopped all of our supplies at our local Dollar Tree and thrift shops! My son had a blast walking through the thrift shop and finding various pieces that he could use to design his acorn art! He ended up with a really neat little leaf that fit his project just perfect! Best part? It was only $1! You never know what treasures you’ll find when you think thrifty! Want to use leaves in your acorn art? #7 – Wax your leaves! So, we recently tried a leaf waxing project and, while it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, it worked perfect for this art project! Want to learn more about leaf waxing? Click here. (Side note: We used a double boiler and a mini crockpot and none of our leaves held color. Probably a mishap of some kind on our end, but I wanted to note this since I was referring you to the article.) There’s absolutely no way I can complete this blog post without telling you about our scary surprise! We happened to be visiting my mom, aka Nana, when we built our acorn art and we managed to totally gross her out when these tiny little maggot looking larvae started literally crawling out of our acorns! Sound totally gross? It was! But of course, it was also very educational! Our acorns had been stored in a cup for over a week and these little creatures started chewing holes from the inside out and crawling all over! So, we had to do some research and learn just what we were witnessing! Turns out, it’s the gloriously disgusting larvae of an acorn weevil! Based on our research, the acorn weevil plants her eggs in acorns and the larvae eat the inside of the acorn until the acorn falls to the ground and then they chew their way out. Check out this very detailed description from a fellow blogger, Mrs. Homegrown: “The female weevil, whose snout is as long as her body (about 3/8″), digs a hole in a green, developing acorn with tiny appendages on the end of her snout. She sucks the oily nutritious juice out of the acorn, and thus fortified, lays her eggs in the hole, and plugs the hole with her own poo. The grubs hatch in the continuous buffet which is the acorn, and snuggled up in there, snacking, until the acorn falls from the tree. By this time (as Nature is smart) they are ready to leave the acorn, and they take the fall to the ground (which must be quite a shock) as a signal to start chewing their way out of the acorn. How fast this happens depends on how thick the acorn’s shell is — anywhere from a few hours to three days. The grubs always chew a perfectly round, 1/8″ hole. It’s just big enough for their head, and they have to squeeze and wiggle their fat, shiny acorn-stuffed body through the hole to escape. Once they fall to the forest floor, they hurry to bury themselves in the soil before something comes along and eats them. If they make it, they take a multiyear nap underground (I’ve read anywhere from 1-5 years). They don’t eat, but they somehow metamorphose into their adult beetle form. When they wake one fine summer day, they crawl out of the soil, mate soon after, and start the process all over again.” Want to read more of her post? Click here. … and here are a few of our “art in progress” shots:

The hunger for spring is in the air! We can't wait to feast our eyes on the return of the Robins, listen to their cheerful song and hopefully get a peek of sweet bright blue eggs nestled in a nest. Until that day arrives we decided make some wee nests to bring spring into the home! To craft these miniatures you will need Acorn caps Small beans (we used soy) Moss Glue gun and glue Robin blue paint String To begin paint your beans blue Tip ~ I discovered that by painting on tinfoil, it keeps the beans from sticking as they dry. Next put a dab of glue inside your acorn top and add the moss Add your eggs with a dab of glue on each With your glue gun draw a fine line of glue across the bottom of the acorn and up the sides. Carefully place your string into the glue and tie at the top to hang. Oh the magic in miniatures... For the love of spring ~ Shanti ~

I love this time of year! The season is changing once again and autumn is almost here! This morning is the first morning that has really had a chill to it! I could see my breath as I went out to do my morning chores. Now I'm wrapped in a cozy blanket enjoying a warm cup of cocoa. I love decorating for autumn because I can utilize so many natural elements that are already on hand. Two things that I happen to have in abundance are branches from a recent landscaping project and acorns. I decided I wanted to create a wreath for my front door with them and I made sure to document it so I could share it with you. I hope you enjoy it! First, an important note about using acorns for crafting: Before you use acorns to decorate in your home, you must get rid of any outdoor pests, which are living in the acorns and which will invade your home and cause a yucky mess. The easiest way to do this is to heat them up. I started with green acorns picked right off the tree. I spread them on a cookie sheet and baked them at 350F for 20 minutes. Check them after 10 minutes and roll them around a bit, so they cook evenly. Let them cool and then you're done! How to make a Twig & Acorn Wreath: 1. Begin your wreath by cutting up a lot of nice straight, thin branches. I got mine from a lilac tree that we removed from our yard. Cut them into approximately two sizes one longer and one a little shorter. Don't worry about making the lengths exact; it will look nicer if there is a slight variation. 2. Next, cut a piece of sturdy cardboard into a circle about the size you want your wreath to be. You want this to be tough corrugated type, a cereal box is not going to be strong enough. I traced around two clay pots to help me get an even circular shape. 3. Beginning with the longer twigs, use a hot glue gun to secure them to the cardboard until it is evenly covered. 4. Use the shorter twigs to fill in on top. Pay attention to any places where the cardboard shows and be sure to cover with a twig or two. It looks pretty fun with the just the twigs, but it's about to get even more fun! Time for the acorns! 5. Hot glue the acorns around the center of the wreath. This helps cover any view of the cardboard that might have been showing in the center and really makes this wreath stand out. 6. Once the glue has cooled and everything is set, use a soft under the finger nail type scrub brush to gently brush the wreath off. Brush in the direction of the twigs all the way around. This will get most of those stringy hot glue webs off. I love how this turned out! I used a cute fall ribbon to hang it on my door and I think it looks great! I haven't had too many visitors since making this wreath, but those who've stopped by have almost always complimented it! It feels good to create! I especially like creating something awesome out of things that are just lying around. For another great wreath tutorial check out how to make grapevine wreaths HERE. This post was featured on these great blogs: Shared at these great blogs: BFF Open House at The Answer is Chocolate Home Sweet Home at The Charm of Home Clever Chicks Blog Hop at The Chicken Chick Sunday Linky at Suburbs Mama Silver Pennies Sunday at Finding Silver Pennies Super Sunday Link Party at Who Needs a Cape? Creative Home and Garden Hop at Little Homestead on the Hill Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do Monday Funday at Lines Across Mostly Homemade Mondays at Homegrown and Healthy What'd You Do This Weekend at Tumbleweed Contessa Tuesday Garden Party at An Oregon Cottage The Backyard Farming Connection Link Party Tuesday at AtoZebra Celebrations Tuesdays with a Twist at Stone Cottage Adventures Rock N Share at The Shady Porch Down Home Blog Hop at Tilly's Nest Home and Garden Thursday at A Delightsome Life Treasure Hunt Thursday at From My Front Porch To Yours Lovely Ladies Linky at Life with the Crust Cut Off The HomeAcre Hop at Black Fox Homestead Feature Friday at Blissful and Domestic From the Farm at Sunny Simple Life Farmgirl Friday at Deborah Jean's Dandelion House Cottage Style Party at Lavender Garden Cottage Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts Feathered Nest Friday at French Country Cottage Frugal Friday at The Shabby Nest Masterpiece Monday at Boogieboard Cottage Made By You Monday at Skip To My Lou Work it Wednesday at The Happy Housie Strut Your Stuff at Six Sisters' Stuff

Oh my goodness...the sweet little acorn toadstools I made in May just sparked my imagination... I started to think about entire villages of little acorn toadstool people, with acorn toadstools dazzling the laneways...you're going to get pretty sick of acorn toadstool crafts by the time I'm done with you!!! So...to make these sweet little peeps...you will need: acorns with caps small wooden beads paint, (red, white, black) brushes glue gun & glue First paint your acorn tops red with white spots...let them dry Get some small beads and paint on little faces...I put my beads on a knitting needle and balanced it on a mason jar for the painting part. If you want to add hair you can do that too...let them dry thoroughly. Next, using your glue gun, attach the bead head to the acorn...the pointy side will be pointing up... if it doesn't stand properly, use a free standing belt sander or sand paper to make the bottom even. Glue on your acorn cap/toadstool hat... At this point, if you want add a little felt robe...after all, your little people might get a case of the chills whilst out on an adventure! Here is the back view of the robe...basically I took a bit of wool felt, cut out a cape shape and glue gunned it to my little acorn people! These are super sweet...I have little toadstool acorn EVERYTHINGS all over my house...I have to say, put about 10 of these together, and put them on a window ledge and they look positively charming! I'm also thinking...add a hook eye to the top and you have a sweet little ornament! Of course...you could also let the children play with them...for a little while ;) I would NOT recommend you give these to little little folks...they are quite fragile and would definately be a choking hazard! With spotty, dotty, toadstool LOVE xo maureen

wallflowerstudiogarden.com

This article is about acorn crafts. It contains a wide variety of fall autumn projects and ideas that kids and adults can make out of real acorns. There are lots of pictures and resources.

Flower Fairies Spring Welcome Wreath Flower Spirits Pressed Flower Butterfly {finger puppet} Root Children Mandala Sun catchers Spring Fairy Toadstool Cottage Recycled Rainbow Windsock Rainbow Fairies Flower Print Sachets Rainbow Lantern St Patrick Peg St Patrick Rainbow Wand (Guest post for CBC) Rainbow Pots and Leprechans Wool Felted Chick Homemade Silly Putty Rainbow Ribbon Wands Recycled Rainbow Wreath Felted Rainbow Rocks Rainbow Sunburst Rainbow Heart Transparency Rainbow Wax Suncatcher Rainbow Flower Garden Goddess Wooden Spoon Garden Stakes Blossom Baby and Egg Cradle Little Chick Beautiful Paper Butterflies Pussy Willows Stone Garden Markers Paper Peonies Flower Children Mama and Baby Bunnies Silk Dyed Eggs Birch Bark Basket Fern and Flower Adorned Eggs Acorn Nest Ornament Vibrant Vegetable Dyed Eggs Fluffy Egg Chicks Earth Day Luminary Blossom Fairies Mosaic Bird Bath

Holistic toys, crafts and parenting to nurture your soul.

I bet the busiest time of year for craft stores is the holiday season. There are so many amazing projects to try, and when you’ve got Christmas crafts on your…

Use easy materials and tools to make adorable DIY pine cone crafts using fresh pinecones from the nature for kids and adults this Fall.

My Oakies are handmade in the U.S.A with lots of love, imagination and attention to details. Each are a unique piece of art, according to the variation of natural products that are used. Thank you for supporting small business owners. Your order consists of the basketball Oakie that you choose from photos. Size 5.25" high 5.5" wide 2.5" deep All creations are one of a kind. It is made out of an assortment of nuts, twigs and wood that ive found in nature. I use industrial hot glue to assemble them and cover glue areas with 2 coats of varnish to make them waterproof and uv protected. ------> Be sure to check out my large inventory of Oakies at https://www.etsy.com/shop/Oakiesbylaurawhite Disclaimer My pieces are intended as decorative pieces. Checking hazard. This item is not a toy. They contain small pieces and are not intended for children.