It’s officially FALL! Here’s a cute and easy fall craft you can do with ACORNS – assuming the squirrels haven’t gotten to them all first.

Acorns are popular symbols in jewelry and keepsakes, as well as in folklore and magick.

Acorns are an old symbol of good luck, strength, and prosperity.
Carrying an acorn in your pocket is said to protect you from illnesses.
Placing an acorn on your windowsill under a full moon is said to bring you good fortune.
“Passing the acorn” is an ancient pagan practice of gifting an acorn to a fellow witch at Samhain.
The red tannins from the water of soaked acorns can be used as a dye. Tannin-water from soaked acorns is also anti-septic, anti-viral, and will help with minor burns, rashes, and poison ivy.

Because it’s fall, and nearly Samhain, I wanted to preserve some acorns and place them on our family altar and make a necklace for K and myself to wear! Fortunatley, we live in an area of the country where several types of oak trees are abundant – and the acorns have just recently begun to fall. Preserving the acorns for our decor was super easy, and the necklaces turned out really cute! Here’s how:

First, collect some acorns – obviously 😉 If acorns are not available where you live, you can get them from Amazon! Make sure they do not have any holes or visible rot/mold. It’s OK if the caps come off, you can glue them back on. Just make sure you have a cap for every acorn!

Rinse the acorns in water and gently brush over each one with a bristly paintbrush, toothbrush, or other soft bristled brush.

Set them on a flat surface to air dry for 1 hour. Then place the acorns (and caps) in a shallow baking dish and place into an oven set to 175F. Allow to remain in the oven for 2 hours, rotating the acorns every 30 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

Once they have cooled you can leave them as is, or you can place a shiny clear coat over them, or you can paint them! I recommend using enamel or acrylics if you choose to pain them.

If you want to make your own acorn necklace, you’ll need:

a needle
an eye pin (or jewelry wire to make an eye pin)
a chain with a clasp, leather cording, or whatever you want to string the acorn on to make the necklace.
an extra o-ring
an acorn, prepared as above. It’s actually easiest if you chose one that has been separated from it’s cap – though you’ll still need the cap!
hot glue gun

Instructions:

Insert the needle straight down into the cap where you want the eye pin to go. Be careful not to put too much pressure on the acorn cap so it doesn’t crumble or crack. Wiggle the needle around to enlarge the hole a bit then insert the eye pin, loop side out.
Trim the eye pin so there is only a little bit inside the acorn (about 3-5mm). Bend this part of the eye pin so it doesn’t pull straight out of the cap.
Fill the acorn cap with hot glue and quickly press the acorn body into the cap. Hold pressure until set.
Place the o-ring through the eye pin and close securely.
You now have an acorn charm that you can place on your necklace chain, cord, or string!

We tried making the charm with 2 holes in the cap at first, but it was very difficult to pass the eye pin through both holes. The second charm we made, I used the method above and it worked wonderfully!

A note of caution, make sure if you paint the acorns that they are good and dry before you wear them as a necklace!! I’d even advise putting a clear coat over the paint so it doesn’t rub off on clothing. My little one treated her acorn as a chewie necklace shortly after we made hers and it resulted in a blue face and stained shirt! (c’est la vie)

The rest of our acorns are resting in this adorable leaf bowl on our altar!

I’m slightly addicted to colorful acorns now and I imagine we will make this a yearly seasonal tradition! Waxed pinecones are next 😉

For more acorn and fall craft ideas – follow us on Pinterest!

Easy Fall Leaf Print Art Project

What’s a better way to learn about different trees / leaf patterns than this esay leaf print project?

All you need are leaves of various shapes and sizes, acrylic or tempura paunts, brushes, and a printable surface (we chose a small canvas, but you could also use t-shirts or tote bags!).

We gathered our leaves from our backyard, but you could gather them really anywhere during the fall! Special places or on a nature walk… Try gathering both deciduous and coniferous leaves! Just make sure you choose leaves that arent too brittle or they will break and crumble when you try to press them down.

Once you have your leaves, evenly paint the underneath side of the leaf to get all the vein patterns. You want a thin wet coat, no glops or it won’t show the print very well.

Position your leaf painted side down and lightly press/rub from the stem outward towards the tips, being caregul not to scoot the leaf across the surface of the canvas (or t-shirt, paper, etc.)

Then, gently peel the leaf upward from its stem and voila! You should have a leaf print!

Try painting patterns or multiple colors on a single leaf for more artsy prints. Also, don’t be afraid to let the prints overlap!

Experiment and have fun. Try to identify the trees each leaf came from, talk about the differences you see in the leaf patterns, etc.

Once we were done with our leaves, we let the re-painted and let the leaves dry, then ran them through oyr laminator. We cut out around their shapes and, with the help of Facebook and Google, identified each leaf’s tree and wrote its name on the unpainted side in Sharpie for my daughter’s nature collection (and educational purposes)!