Sparkling Acorn Napkin Ties

Thanksgiving gets a bit of a raw deal when it comes to crafts and decorations. Falling between Halloween and Christmas, it never really had much of a chance at my house anyway. Besides, T-day is all about the food and the family.

I did manage to squeak out one new project before the feast begins. I made napkin ties for 17 from stuff found in the yard and down in my Lair (They set me up with this gorgeous lair!)

This project is a tutorial hack based on the Harvest Napkin Ties that Martha has on her site. I tweaked them a little with gold paint, glitter and beads and there are a lot of variations that could be created by changing the embellishments.

Tools & Bits for 1 Tie

• 2 whole acorns with caps
• metallic gold spray paint (I used Krylon General Purpose Metallic, Gold)
• needle nose pliers
  
• craft knife
  
• Dremel or pin vice and drill bit
• white craft glue
• gold glitter (I used Martha's Fine Glitter, Gold)
• 12" piece of 1/8" satin ribbon, brown or a fall color of your choice
• 12" piece of 1/8" satin ribbon, gold or a fall color of your choice
• package of crimp covers (I used Beadalon's Gold Crimp Cover Variety Pack)
• 2 small gold beads (I used Blue Moon's Gold Rondel Spacer Beads)
  
• hot glue gun
  

Start by making sure your acorns are clean and completely dry. If the caps are attached, leave them attached. Following the directions for your paint, spray paint the acorns gold. This may take two or three passes as the paint dries and the acorn gets turned. When the paint is dry, carefully remove the cap. It is worth noting that painting extra caps just in case one breaks is not a bad idea. Some caps will just pop off. Others need gentle encouragement from pliers or a craft knife.

Special Note: Keep your caps with your acorns! It's not hard to figure out which cap goes with which acorn when there are only two. It's much harder if you're trying to match 30 loose caps with their acorns. If you need to make a bunch of these I suggest using a muffin tin and some paper cup liners to keep each pair of acorns with their respective caps. The paper liners are also great for catching glitter and returning the excess to the jar.

Using the pliers, break off any remaining stem on the cap. Drill a hole in the top of the acorn caps just large enough to get a ribbon through. A pin vice is a great tool for drilling holes in small or delicate things, but if you're doing a bunch, go with the Dremel. I held the acorn cap with the pliers when drilling with the Dremel so that I didn't accidentally mangle my fingers.

Brush a thin layer of white glue over the top of the cap and sprinkle liberally with glitter. When the glue is dried, shake off the excess glitter.

Put the two strands of satin ribbon together and fold them in half to find the center. Use a small (3mm) crimp cover to hold the two ribbons together at the center point. This keeps your guests from misplacing the non-embellished ribbon.

String a gold bead onto one end of your ribbon and then thread the ribbon through a glittered acorn cap. Use hot glue to attach the cap back on the acorn. Repeat this process for the other side. Trim any ribbon that sticks out from under the cap with your craft knife.

Finish off the napkin tie by taking two of the 4mm crimp covers and squeezing them shut over the ribbon in such a way that the bead stays snug to the acorn cap. Tie around your rolled up napkins and enjoy!

Variations to consider:

• Separate the caps from the acorns. Paint the caps a metallic brown and the acorns a metallic green.
• Use glitter on the tops and the acorns. If doing brown tops with green acorns, use the appropriate color glitter.
• Paint your acorns black or white. Paint tiny pictures on them or write the name of someone on your guest list and use the acorns as seating cards.
• Use microbeads instead of glitter.
• Use glass beads instead of metallic beads. String more than one onto the ribbon.
• Decorate the second ribbon with extra beads.