Teensy Acorn Owls!

Posted by Ethne~

Getting ready for Slags’ shower in a few weeks, I made up a party favor that I think is pretty much the cutest thing ever.  Any of the shower guests who follow the blog will see this, but that’s ok, they’ll still get to take one home!  Remember – the theme of the shower is owls! (See Baby C’s valance tutorial here, and I promise to put up better pictures after the shower and it’s not late at night on a Monday.)

Mom-to-be Slags, moi, new momma Grizz and Steph at Girls Trip '12; Lori behind the camera

Baby C's nursery valance

I saw the idea for this craft on Pinterest, but didn’t click on the actual site to see if it was a tutorial, so I made it up myself. Then early October I went and picked those pygmy acorns off the ground (that I referred to in the younghouselove Fall Pinterest Challenge post here) to use as the owls.  They were much bigger in the photo in Pinterest, but pygmy was all big city, MN, had to offer as far as I could see.

So first, I soaked the acorns in a solution of Dawn dish soap and vinegar to kill off any insects that might be inhabiting them. Trust me, there is no concern of this with these acorns, but I do not deal well with bugs, so I wanted to make SURE.  Then I allowed the acorns to dry out for a couple of days.

Clean and drying

I also picked up a couple of small cottonwood tree sticks out of the backyard of our house.  I actually paid the girls to pick them up, at the bargain price of $0.01 per stick.  They considered themselves rich.

Next, I crashed my felt stash for pink and yellow felt and cut out micro wings and beaks.  I am fairly certain I advanced the use of reading glasses by one year of my life, but I will wait to harass Slags about this till the time comes.

I utilized clear glue to affix the wings and beaks onto the acorns.  By the time the last of the acorns was complete, the first of the wings were tacky enough on the starter acorn owls that I began to affix the micro googly eyes (cost of $2.99 minus 40% with coupon at JoAnn) next to the beaks.  I did this with clear Elmer’s glue.  I will have to re-glue some of the eyes because they are not all sticking.  [Word to the wise not to use that glue if you follow this tutorial.]

Roly-poly

These little guys dried overnight.  I must say I was in love, despite being cross-eyed.

Whatcha lookin' at little dude?

Next, I glued the acorn owls to the sticks with my hot glue gun.  Even though they’re small, they did not balance particularly well on these branches, so I had to make pretend forked branches with the glue-gun and smaller pieces of stick to forge a balance.  Impressively, it is nearly impossible to tell that these sticks did not come as forked branches to begin with. Winning!

To give context, that acorn is the size of my thumbnail

The owls will balance on a shelf, but I thought since they will be given in December, guests may wish to hang them on a Christmas tree as an ornament.  So I glue-gunned a little metal ring from my stash onto the back of the acorn, with the ring angled slightly out so an ornament hook could connect through it.  I also glued a tiny red satin ribbon onto the branch, like a little holly blossom, to make it festive.

I made a few extra, so that KD and Easy Mac could have one of these – I like to get an ornament for the girls every year, and since the girls helped to make these owls, this can be the ornament from Shaun and me this year (Shaun helped supervise the stick pick-up).  Lori and I will *also* give one of these to our favorite blog authors, John & Sherry Petersik of younghouselove blog, when we see them tonight for their DIY book signing here in big city, MN!  We are beyond excited. Lori is riding Amtrak with Mur-Man just to come for it!!!!  Coincidentally, Sherry P. picked up a few acorns at her house in Virginia and made an acorn craft out of it, and then the acorns got moldy a few days later; so now our owl acorn gift can be a replacement!!  Otherwise maybe they can regift, that'd be ok too.