Felted Acorns

Acorns are adorable, aren't they? Amy, one of our Customer Service Team Members, found a bunch of acorns and thought she couldn't let them go to waste. She made the cutest little felted acorns with her harvested acorn tops and we're going to show you how you can make your own!

Things You Need:

• Felting needle
• Wool
• Dried acorn tops
• Foam pad/work surface
• Hot glue gun 

You're almost ready to start felting, but first you want to dry out your acorn tops. This is to kill and potential bugs and mold that might be hiding in your harvested craft materials! 

How to Dry Your Acorns

1. Soak the acorns in a 10% vinegar/water solution for 20 minutes. 

2. Spread the acorns out on a paper towel and let them dry for at least an hour, but it would probably be best to leave them overnight. 

3. Cover a baking sheet or pan with tin foil. Spread out the acorns across the sheet. The acorns can be touching but you don't want any of them to be on top of each other. 

4. Heat your oven to its lowest setting, 200 degrees or lower. Place your baking sheet of acorns in the oven. Set a timer for 20 minutes and check them every 20 minutes to make sure they are not burning. You can turn/rotate the acorns if it seems like they are getting too brown. Keep them in the oven for at least 1.5 hours up to as long as 2 hours. 

5. Remove them from the oven and let them cool down before using them!

Once you have all of your materials prepared, you're ready to start felting! 

Draft out a 3-4 inch long piece of your wool.

Roll up your wool into a little sausage. 

Begin needling your wool sausage so it stays together. This is the first step of shaping our acorn so it doesn't need to be super tight, it just needs to stay together on it's own. Remember to rotate your wool to maintain your round shape. 

Once your wool stays together on its own, pick which end is going to be the pointy part of your acorn and start to form the point. You can do this by needling extra around this end to form a conical shape. Remember the more you needle an area the more it will compact, so this is how you can form a nice tip. 

Now that you have something resembling an acorn, pick one of your acorn tops and needle more around your wool acorn to make sure that the wool will fit inside the acorn top. Your wool acorn can just barely fit inside because we are going to needle it more after the top is attached to make it fit better. 

Grab your glue gun and place a dot of hot glue in the cap. 

Attach your wool to the cap by placing your cap on the wool acorn while the hot glue is still sticky. 

Once your glue cools, needle around your whole acorn to firm up the wool and tuck the bits that are sticking out under your cap. This is the needle felting step to spend the most time on, make sure your shape and firmness is how you want it! 

The final step is to needle extra around the point of your acorn just to really firm up and keep that shape looking good! 

And then for a last extra step, make a bunch more acorns so you have a whole bushel full! 

We think these look cute just lying around amongst Fall decor, but you could also incorporate them into a fall wreath, garland, or floral arrangement! Put a bunch of them in a vase or bowl, or just make a cute acorn pile on a shelf! 

If you want to do this craft with small kids we have a kit to make a very similar  Felted Acorn Kit that requires no needle felting! The kit also comes with the acorn tops so you won't have to worry about finding acorns or drying out your acorns in the oven. 

Have fun with your fall crafting, we'd love it if you would share your fall projects with us on  Facebook or Instagram!