Laura here today with another off the page tutorial, I hope you are not getting tired of them! I am just having so much fun creating a variety of things, and I can't help myself!
My youngest son and I collected a bunch of acorns while on a walk the other day, and I turned them into a fall home decor item.
Don't they just inspire you?
I will admit, I did totally gross myself out with these beauties! After collecting them, I put the bin into my craft room to play with later on, that night while I was blogging I heard something moving - turns out a couple of the acorns had larvae inside them - ewwww!
I put the whole bucket outside immediately! Of course, my comedy of errors couldn't stop there, no sooner were the acorns outside than a fat squirrel was casing my yard! Ha!
Anyway, apparently the rule is you have to bake the acorns to ensure all the wildlife is out of them.
Pop them onto a baking tray, covered in foil, and bake at 170C for about 3 hours. You may want to set an alarm, if you are anything like me out of site is out of mind!
After that you just need to gather some paints and a paint brush. I started with grey, rust, oatmeal, green and blue paints. I mixed the colours together to create a variety of shades in each colour group. My living room is oatmeal, grey and green - so that was my jumping off point.
It helps with drying if the acorns will stand on their little hats, like the two on the right of the photo above. By the way, if the hats pop off in the baking process you can use hot clue or ZipDry to glue them back on. They are easier to paint with the hats on, as you have something to hang on to.
I had a few that didn't stand up so I propped them on top of lids from bottles of Mr. Huey's mist, they were just the right size.
After the paint was dry, I "painted" a few of the lighter colour acorns with Heidi Swapp Color Shine in gold. It is my favourite gold mist, because it actually looks gold when it is dry. I just added a light coat with a paint brush.
Doesn't this just say fall?
So glad you visited today! I promise to try to bring you something papercraft-y for next week!
Laura
xo
Thanks for sharing! They look so cute!
ReplyDeleteWhat a fabulous Fall project, Laura! They look wonderful all painted up and nestled around the candle! I do have to add an EWWWW and an LOL! Great post! :o)
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun idea, looks so festive. Good thing you found out about baking them first. :)
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