Acorn Cap Toadstool Ornaments.

For the past few years, we have decorated our yule tree exactly the same. We decorate it in blue and silver. Our ornaments are very simple.  Pinecones painted silver, blue bows, silver bells, blue glass balls, gingerbread and hand blown glass icicle ornaments.

This year i wanted something different. i wanted something even more simple and rustic.  i decided a  woodland theme would be perfect.  Later that same day i headed over to the Martha Stewart website to snag the gingerbread recipe we use every year. Apparently Martha has been reading my mind, on the homepage was a photo gallery for a Woodland Christmas at Martha's house.

The photo gave me so many ideas.  One of my favorite of course were the toadstools. The wool ornaments in the photo gallery were made fom wool felt and are needle felted. i wanted something a little different, and came up with these acorn cap toadstool ornaments.  They are really easy to make and look wonderful on the tree.

All you need for this project is some acorn caps, preferably the flat larger ones that measure around 1" across.  Red and white paint, clean carded wool, and some white embroidery floss or string. Hot water, a drop of dish soap and a needle.

 

i let my daughter paint all the caps red.  Then we added all the white dots. 

 

To make the stems we wet felted some white roving.  It was very easy. We just pulled off a piece that was 3-4" long and dipped it into some hot water that had a drop of dish soap in it.  Then we rolled the wool between our hands the way you would roll clay to make a snake. We had to dip it into the water  few times, and continue to roll and squeeze out the water until we had a felted tube. It looks very similar to a dread lock. We cut the tube into 1" pieces, and then wet felted them a bit more (rolling them in our hands) so that the edges rounded off a bit.  They looked a bit like cigarette butts before we softened the edges.  Then we let them dry.

i apologize now for my bad pictures. :)  These are very easy to put together.  All of our acorn caps had a natural hole right in the center where the stem had been.  On a few of them it wasn't quite as obvious, but we were able to create a hole just using our needle. We didn't have to drill them at all. Depending on the type of acorns you have you may get lucky, or you may have to use a dremel to drill your holes.

To put them together. i used white embroidery floss on a needle. i ran the floss up through the bottom of the wool stem (1) and through the bottom of the acorn cap.  Then i brought the needle back through the top of the cap, leaving a loop. (2).  i tied a knot at the base of the loop, to keep it from slipping through. Then i bought the needle through the top of the wool stem, out the bottom and tied another knot. (3)  i put a dab of glue on the knot and snipped off the extra string.

 

Here are our finished ornaments.  We have made a dozen so far, and need to go out gathering more acorn caps.i love the simplicity of these, and plan to make some that are natural colored as well.

We have not dug our tree yet, so i am still coming up with ideas for decorating it.  i'll be sure to share them, and pictures of our finished tree once it is decorated.

If any thing is unclear in this tutorial let me know and i can try to explain it a little better. :)
Enjoy!