Acorn Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkins

My daughter Lauren and I made these cute little Jack-O-Lanterns this past weekend, and now they adorn my kitchen sink windowsill.

We baked our acorns (without the caps) at 250 for about 15 minutes to kill all the buggies. You might want to test your acorns to make sure they will stand up before baking. The end that had the cap will be the bottom. Next we put a strip of double faced tape onto a paper plate. After the acorns were cool we stuck their bottoms to the tape. Then painted away, getting the paint as close to the bottom of the acorn as possible. We used FolkArt Autumn Leaf acrylic paint. It took several coats to get good coverage. When dry we took the acorns off the tape and painted the bottoms.

The faces were drawn onto the acorn with a black fine Sharpie. And the stem was colored on with a brown Sharpie. If your acorns don't have a tip sticking up, you can just make a brown dot.

Here we used the caps from smaller acorns to look like cute hats

Lauren used an orange Sharpie to "paint" these acorns instead of acrylic paint. They gave more of a glossy appearance.

Here are some non-traditional faces and such.