Turn your collection of acorn caps into a colourful autumn craft – make pom pom acorns!

This is the time of the year I find myself coming back from nature outings with my pockets full. The truth is, I cannot walk past acorns and chestnuts without pocketing a couple. I still have lots left from the previous year, but I conveniently forget about that, thinking instead only of how smooth and pleasant the chestnuts feel and what crafts I can make from acorn caps. What crafts, indeed! For the last few years, I’ve been collecting acorns most dutifully, and in that time I haven’t actually made any acorn crafts.

So, this fall, I decided to use some of my precious acorn caps. Mostly so that I could go and get more.

This is a very simple craft, so children of all ages can join in the fun!

Materials

Pom poms.
Acorn caps.
Hot glue gun or white glue. Hot glue works faster, but if safety is a concern with younger children, white glue can be used as well.

Tutorial

There is a variety of pom poms, so choosing the ones you like is the best part of the craft. You can get acrylic ones – or you can get woollen ones. If you’re set up for needle felting, you can even make your own woollen pom poms. I have a tutorial for how to easily make woollen pom poms. They do have an interesting texture that you can both see and touch. But the acrylic ones are also just fine! On the picture above, the brown, orange, yellow, light blue and purple pom poms are woollen. The green, blue and red pom pom are acrylic.

Before gluing, do a test fitting of pom poms into different sizes of acorn caps. Then drop a bit of hot glue into the acorn cap and firmly press the pom pom into it.

5 Ways to Use the Pom Pom Acorns

1 — Children can play with these acorns, using them for pretend play, counting and sorting.

2 — They can be attached with pins to backpacks or jackets.

3 — If you tie a string to the acorn cap (and secure it with glue), the acorns can become necklaces.

4 — Or you can make a colourful acorn wind chime. For the base of it, I used a piece of bark I found while walking on the beach at some point. With eight holes drilled into it, it worked perfectly for this project.