Acorn Art: Discover the Fun of Making Your Own Easy & Quirky Masterpiece!

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

1. Acorns (some with hats! (also known as the stem and capule))
2. Small Sticks or Branches
3. Small Acorn Hats (Capules) for Feet
4. Google Eyes
5. Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks
6. Sanding Block or Sanding Paper
7. Paint and Painting Supplies (optional)
8. 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: