 The Dollar Nut - When my children were small, I used to take care of a tiny old woman who would carefully clean out the insides of the walnut, place a folded
up dollar bill inside and glue the shells back together. She would glue a string loop at the top and hang them on her tree. when children came to visit, she would let them choose a dollar nut from her tree. My children still remember that. Contributed by Bev Forsling, forsling@xmission.com
Make a Walnut Ship by filling half a walnut shell with molten wax, then setting three "masts" made of tooth picks, and a front spar also of toothpick. Use the round ones. Then, use thread and glue to make cross spars on the masts. Use thread to string together rigging on the masts, and small
swatches of white cloth or paper (old cotton handkerchiefs work well), to make sails. Glue these on the spars, and use thread from the bottom corners of the sheet to the sides of the gunwales. You can also add small flags to the masts. These make great Christmas tree ornaments.
Contributed by John Thompson, jthompso@mcs.net
Make a Jack o Lantern - Sand the fat end of a whole walnut so it will stand on end without tipping. Paint orange, and add a yellow face of eyes, nose, mouth. Add a short stick for a stem, with a couple of leaves and two pieces of thin green wire. Makes a great Halloween decoration.
Contributed by John Thompson, jthompso@mcs.net
Make a Walnut Granny doll - Instructions here
Make a tiny cradle - Instructions here
"Hidden treasure" basket of nuts - Instructions here
Walnut Strawberries - Paint the whole walnut red and randomly glue on tiny pearls for the seeds. Then cut a green felt strawberry leaf top and attached a hanger.
Make a mouse! - Take half a walnut shell and place flat side down. Take two pistachio nut shell halves and glue them, pointy standing up, near the pointed end of the walnut half for ears. Glue on two of those tiny googly eyes, a pipe cleaner tail and some whiskers made of fishing line and put
a black dot at the very pointed end of the walnut shell and you have a little mouse. These can be used as ornaments, or glued to packages just for fun. And you can use the nutmeats for candy making, another of my Christmas passions.
Contributed by Jean Lexington, drlois@hotmail.com
Racing mice! - You can take Jean Lexington's idea one step further. If you place a marble in the hole at the bottom of the mouse and glue a piece of fabric (not felt) over the bottom (trim the fabric when the glue dries) you can race your mice. Place them on a table and flick them with your
fingers. They will roll across the table.
Contributed by Angi Hathaway, ahathaway@kconline.com
Tiny treasure boxes - Instructions here
Tiny knitting baskets - For a cute Christmas ornament that looks like a knitting basket -- use half a walnut shell, position a length of yarn in the bottom of the walnut shell and glue for a hanger. Wind up little balls of yarn and glue into the shell and on top of the yarn hanger. Stick in
a couple ball head pins for knitting needles. You can also fill with a pinked square of fabric and fill with tiny pine cones. Use a ribbon for the hanger (attaching the same as for the knitting baskets.)
Contributed by Nancy Worrell
Nancy Worrell Designs
A walnut mouse bed - Make the mice faces from little grey poms with felt ears and bead eyes and noses. Fill the walnut shell with some polyfil and cover with a little piece of fabric for a blanket. Let the faces poke out from the blanket and cut little felt tails to glue just under the other
end of blanket. Attach a hanger. Or you could make pom bears instead of mice.
Contributed by Shirley of
The Craftmall USA
Make a pink flamingo - Instructions here
Walnut Strawberries - For the walnut strawberries we painted the whole walnut red and randomly glued on tiny pearls for the seeds. Then cut a green felt strawberry leaf top and attached a hanger.
Contributed by Shirley of
The Craftmall USA |
