Lucky me to have so much abundance in my life and trust me these acorns that fall from the indigenous scrub oak in the yard are VERY ABUNDANT. I collected a good amount this year with plans to create some interesting or fun things with them. If you don’t have acorns they can be purchased in bulk here:https://www.etsy.com/listing/243599564/large-acorns-natural-acorns-real-acorns.
The #1 rule is anything that comes in from the outside needs to be baked or frozen to kill any little bugs that may reside in the natural materials. I also sorted through threw out any I found with bore holes or fractures.
My space - love!
I tried a variety of acrylic paints with semi-opaqued to opaque covering properties and liked the opaque the best..
Step 1: Rinse and drain the acorns. Place the acorns on a foil covered, flat baking pan (cookie sheet works great) and bake at 350 for 10 minutes, stir and bake another 10 minutes. You can soak them overnight in some water with dish soap, letting them dry and then putting them in a zip lock bag in the freezer for 24 hours does the same thing, and they don’t split.
Step 2: The nut is smooth and although the paint sticks well I found that paint with transparent properties required more coats. The opaque paint covers best and has a flat appearance. I have a collection of acrylic craft paint and used what I had on hand and even used left over house paint.
Brush strokes will show so follow the grain of the nut. I placed the painted nut on a sheet of wax paper to dry but the nut rolls so I ended up painting one side at a time. I used inexpensive brushes to paint the nut and a fine liner brush to create the circles. After the first coat of paint dried, I applied a second coat of paint and let it dry completely. I used the opposite end of the brush to make dots. I took them outside and laid them on newspaper to final coat with polyurethane clear coat spray (hardware store). You could also give the nut a coat of modpodge or water thinned Elmer’s glue to finish them off. Once they were dry they were ready to display!
Using a fine rigger paint brush helped to make the lines.
The Gamble Oak nut (Scrub Oak) indigenous to our state is quite small. I've got to go on the hunt for the larger oak trees and bigger acorns. This one was painted with a opalescent transparent paint.
You could go with a theme color or two or three to match your decor.
For the jack-o-lantern pumpkins I painted the caps with black paint and while wet sprinkled black glitter onto the wet paint. Using a black Pitt pen I drew the face - this was difficult as the nut is so small.