🍄 DIY Woodland Ornaments 🍄

🍄 DIY Woodland Ornaments 🍄

My husband was born and raised in the Black Forest of Germany, a magical place that inspired so many fairy tales. It's also the home to these gorgeous mushrooms - called amanita muscaria. When I saw a similar idea for ornaments on Etsy that featured these mushrooms, it reminded me so much of his home that I knew we had to try to make some ourselves. They're too adorable!

Here's what you need:
- Empty walnut shell halves
- Moss
- Oven-bake clay in red and cream
- White acrylic paint and a tiny paint brush
- Hot glue gun
- Twine
- (Optional) Super glue

Instructions:
Crack open whole walnuts in half and scrape them clean. Hot glue moss on the bottom half of each shell. Shape the red clay into tiny mushroom tops and the cream clay into stems and bake at 300°F for 15 minutes or until hardened. After the mushrooms cooled, I gently pulled the stems off and used a dot of super glue to ensure they'd stay in place. Then use the end of a tiny paint brush to add white dots to the mushroom tops. Hot glue the mushrooms in place. To hang, tie twine in a knot, clip the loose ends very close to the knot, then hot glue the knot onto the top of the walnut shell.

This may sound very involved, but it took about an hour from start to finish. This is definitely a project more suited to adults (with the hot glue and super glue), but my children loved handing me small bits of moss and choosing the mushrooms to go in each shell.