Acorn Craft: large acorns for decorating

Make this adorable acorn craft for fall or Christmas time. These large acorns will make a statement in your decorating!

This is always a weird time of the year for decorating. I am still sharing fall posts while planning and decorating for Christmas! Ha! Thankfully, this super cute acorn craft will work for either! Even though I have styled the acorns with my fall decor, you can be sure I will be using them double time with my Christmas decor. 

These large faux acorns turned out so great! I am in love with the pinecone capped acorns! I almost want to call them acorn art. Ha! Although the smaller twine capped ones are pretty fantastic too! 🙂

Make your own acorns for decorating

I have seen plenty of tutorials for smaller DIY acorns out of plastic eggs but I had not seen any large DIY acorns made. I wanted some larger acorns for my fall decorating, but did not want pay the big price tag I saw at several stores. So I decided to make my own using the same premise as the smaller egg tutorials.

Pay no attention to all those hot glue strings! 😉 Doh! It is amazing what the camera catches compared to the naked eye! 

Supplies to make this acorn craft

*There are links to products in this post that I use or are similar to products I use. If you buy something from one of these links, I may make a small commission (with no additional cost to you) from the purchase. I will not recommend anything that I would not buy myself.

• 2 large foam eggs – 3.8″ x 5.6″
• 2 medium foam eggs – 2.8″ x 3.6″ 
• Yarn
  • Lion Brand Homespun in Rococo
  • Lion Brand Hometown in Aspen Tweed
  • Lion Wool Ease in Grey Marble
• Jute Twine
• Pinecones –  I just used some of the scented pinecones you find around Christmas time
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Scissors
• Wire cutters
• 3/8″ rope – optional
• Small twig for stems

An easy acorn craft to make in an afternoon

Okay, so truth be told, this acorn craft is very easy to make but it does take some time. However, the results are so worth it! It took a couple hours to make one of the pinecone acorns. I usually just put on a mindless TV show or movie that I can listen to at the same time to pass the time.  

The smaller twine capped acorns can be whipped up in a lot less time. 

Check out the video on how to make this acorn craft

Don’t want to read all the instructions? I have included a video in this post showing you how make the pinecone capped acorn. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

How to make DIY acorns

The first step in making your faux acorn is to wrap yarn around the foam egg. For the most part, in the beginning, the yarn would stick to the foam on it’s own because these eggs are not smooth foam. However, I still hot glued it down every once in a while. As I got closer to the top, I had to glue down each pass around the egg. I did not wrap the yarn around the very top of the egg since that would be covered with pinecone scales anyway.

Descale your pinecones

This is probably the most fun part of the project. 😉 If you have done any pinecone crafting before, you know I am kidding. LOL Start on the bottom of the pinecone and pull off the topmost scale with your fingers. You have to go in order of how the scales are attached on the pinecone. The scales pull off easily until you get to a certain point on the pinecone, then no matter how hard you try, you can’t get anymore scales off without breaking them. I found that point to be about a third of the way up from the bottom of the pinecone. Since the pinecones are pretty inexpensive, I just went on to the next pinecone. I used about 4-6 pinecones for each acorn.

You can see the process better in the video. I realized after the fact that I did not photograph the yarn wrapping or descaling parts! Oops! So the bad quality of the two photos above are due to the fact that they are just stills from the video. 

You will end up with a pile of pinecone scales of various sizes which is perfect! Separate out some of the bigger scales to start with. You will add smaller scales as you work your way up the acorn cap.

Start gluing on pinecone scales

For the first row, I started with the largest pinecone scales. After you descale the pinecone, the scales have a concave curve to them and a spiky part on the end. For the first row only, I snipped off the spiky end of the scale with a pair of wire cutters. I did not want this spiky part to interfere with the next layer of scales. About 1/3 of the way down from the top of the larger end of the egg, I hot glued the first row of scales on individually facing “right side out”.

For the consecutive rows after that, I glued the scales on upside down. Now the spiky part did not matter because it was facing into the foam egg. Gluing the scales on this way also helped to achieve the acorn cap look I was going for. I glued the scales on in between the previous row’s scales.

I chose smaller sized scales for the higher rows as I went along. Also, if the scales were really curved, I would push them down onto the counter and “break” them to make them straighter. It did not affect the way they looked but it made them easier to work with.

The smallest scales will finish off the top of the acorn cap.

Lastly add a small section (about 1″ long) cut from a twig for the stem. I just hot glued it right to the center of the cap.

“Wrap up” the smaller acorns

The smaller acorns were much quicker to make as I just wrapped twine around the top for the cap. First, however, I covered them with yarn just like the bigger acorns.

One tip that I wanted to give you to make your foam eggs look more like acorns is to roll the pointed tip of the foam egg around on the counter to flatten it out. I figured this out after doing the second acorn. 🙂 So I went back to the first bigger acorn and did it to that one as well. You can do it before or after wrapping with yarn, it doesn’t matter. Here is a picture of the eggs with the top egg normal and the bottom egg with a flattened tip. 

Start gluing the twine on about 1/3 of the way down from the top of the egg. I ran a bead of hot glue around each wrap right next to the previous wrap.

Continue gluing on twine in a spiral shape until the whole cap is done.

At this point, I thought I was done with it, so I glued on the stem.

However, after looking at it more, it looked a little too one-dimensional for an acorn. So I decided to wrap another layer of twine on the cap to give it more dimension. The acorn on the left only has one wrap of twine whereas the acorn on the right has two wraps. Which do you think looks better?

Here is the finished product. Much better, right?

Another option: rope capped acorn

Since I am all about transparency here and love to show you my mistakes, I figured I better show you one of the first acorns I made. You may have noticed the rope in some of the pictures. Well, I was initially only going to do one pinecone capped acorn and the other large acorn was going to have a rope cap. However… after I made it, I just didn’t love it. In fact, I very much disliked it. LOL I think it boils down to the color combination really.

The rope combined with the grey yarn just didn’t work. I don’t hate the rope as the cap, in fact, I think it works well as it gives that dimension needed. If I would have chosen a different color yarn, it would definitely look better. So, just another option for you. 🙂

Here are some other fall crafts you may love:

• Boho Pumpkins with Braided Raffia
• DIY Fall Leaf Paper Bag Garland
• Finger Knitted Pumpkin
• DIY Interchangeable Farmhouse Sign

Display your DIY faux acorns for decorating

Now all that is left to do is to display these gorgeous faux acorns in your decor. I am currently using mine in a pretty fall tablescape that I will be sharing next week! So stay tuned for that!

The last great thing about this acorn craft is that these are timeless projects that you will be able to use year after year! I know I will! Have a wonderful weekend!