Acorn Jewel Caps



Turn acorns into a work of art!

You will need:

• Acorn caps (try to get the larger, flat ones)
• Markers
• Glue
• Rice

How to:
My sister lives in a state where there is no abundance of acorns so I once sent her a small bag full of them to use for crafts. When she opened the bag it was crawling with what she thought were maggots. Ewwww, so gross. I have since found out that they weren't maggots, but weevils, nasty looking larvae that eat the nut inside. They live in the nut during the winter and can sense when the weather is warmer and will come out then. (Hence them coming out while being shipped cross country in a nice warm box.) I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about them now. Point being, if you're going to do any crafts with acorns, I suggest you follow step one first!

1. Clean  acorn caps of any dirt and debris. Place acorns on baking sheet and cook at low setting (I did 200 degrees.) for about 40 minutes. This will kill any weevils that are lurking in your acorns. Do weevils live in the caps as well? I have no idea, but I was certainly not interested in finding out.
2. Sprinkle a shallow layer of rice on to a plate or pan. (Just enough to give the acorn caps a sturdy place to stand while drying.)

3. Completely color the inside of acorn cap with marker. Place upright on plate of rice.

4. Fill to the rim of cap with glue.

5. Let dry. (Ours took about 3 full days to dry.)

Thoughts:

Totally stole this idea from: http://homemadeserenity.blogspot.com/ a blog that makes me want to own my own chickens. So cute! (the acorns and her blog!) Elliott didn't really have the patience to color in each cap; I had to go behind him and make sure they were filled in. But he totally looooved filling the caps up with glue. Loved it. Couldn't get enough of it. Would probably still be filling acorn caps with glue. Would probably carry glue with him on walks so he could fill stray caps, given the choice.

Me? I thought this was crazy cute. Who would've thought glue would dry into a shiny, glossy color like that? Once you fill the caps up, you have no idea what the color underneath is, but after a few hours the colors start to leak into the edges a bit. We had fun trying to guess what the color was going to be. For three days (several times daily) we would go check on the acorns to see if they had hardened enough. Once it does, the color shines through.

As cute as they are though, we haven't done anything with them. The above blog mentioned using them as a matching game, which is a great idea, but we only used a few colors, so that wouldn't work for us. Still, lots of fun to make.

Elliott's Evaluation:

I liked putting the glue in. I balanced the acorns so I didn't get any glue out. I liked waiting for it to dry and trying to see the colors. I'm waiting to play Matching games with it.