In His Grip: Felted Acorns

I found some great felted acorns on a blog a couple weeks ago and thought "I can do that". I began a search for some acorns so that I could use the little caps, I put a post out on Facebook for anyone with acorns in their yard and I would come by a pick them up. My friend Nancy responded that she had recently found a giant acorn while on a walk and brought it by to me. This nice big acorn was awesome, now just any acorns would not do, I needed the BIG ones. While at K-State for family weekend, we were visiting Anna at the Pi Phi house and what did I see but giant acorns all over their front yard. Score! I had all the BIG acorns I wanted.

I began by taking the nuts out of the caps and cleaning them up a bit. Some still had their leaves attached so I decided to just keep them and see how they will fair over time.

Because I am just a sparkly kind of gal, I decided to spray paint the caps with a metallic gold spray paint. What nature makes, can always be made a little more sparkly with some gold paint,right?

I chose to use wool roving to make the felted nuts, thinking the roving would be easier than Kristi used over at The Speckled Dog. Using roving would also give me the ability to make my acorns mutli colored by mixing the colors together. To add a little more colors I found some 100% wool yarn that I added in as well.

Taking a wooden bead and a hunk of roving large enough to covering the bead, you dunk the whole thing into the hottest water that your hands can stand, working the roving into a ball around the bead.

Then you add a drop of liquid soap and continue to work the ball of wool. I am not sure why you need soap, but just trust me you do. Lightly roll the ball around in your hands dunking it down into the water again and again, putting it a side for awhile and starting another will allow the water and soap to soak in and help the felting process. This takes a lot longer that I anticipated, but as you work it into ball it will continue to get smaller and smaller and will dry even smaller than that. This being said, be sure to start with a little bit bigger ball of wool than you think you are going to need.

Once the felted balls are dry, just hot glue them into the caps and you have some fun acorns for your enjoyment. I am not sure what it is about acorns but I love the way they look. Maybe, its because they are the only nuts around that come with their own accessory, hats. Love it!