DIY nature art: mandalas, acorn monograms, and more!

Hello, my friends!

Winter is often a cold and dreary season, isn’t it? Especially when there’s no snow on the ground which makes it even less motivating to go outside. Well, let’s change that today! Recently, I was trying to think of a fun DIY blog post to do, when my mom suggested I do a nature art post. I loved the idea, plus, it’s an amazing way to get outside even when it’s not the nicest weather out.

Today, we’re going to collect bits and pieces of nature and arrange them into beautiful art!

Grab your jacket, hat, and gloves, and let’s go!

First, grab a bucket or bag to put all your art elements and specimens in! We just used this gray bucket that we found in the garage.

This is a great project to do with younger siblings because they can create whatever they want! Mercy, Luke, and I found most of the elements, but Jewel, Levi, and Zekey made some art once we filled our collection bucket.

We started by walking up through the woods, especially in areas where we knew there would be lots of pinecones, acorns, ferns, and other small things! Of course, make sure to take only what is allowed where you live. A park is not the best place to collect specimens of live plants, for instance. If you have a decent-sized yard, you can find interesting things just outside your house, on your own land.

This moss was practically glowing in the sunlight! I picked some of it and put in the collecting bucket.

Mercy found these acorn tops and they turned out to be perfect for a project you will see later in the post. Pick up any small piece of nature you see that looks interesting and think would be good for a mandala or another nature art project.

I saw these leaves that hadn’t fallen in autumn, so I took a few off the tree and added them to our growing collection of pieces of nature in the bucket. I love the lighting in this picture!

Our dogwood tree always looks so lovely in the spring, summer, and early fall, but now all the leftover berries are shriveled up. They are still a pretty red and purple color though, so we picked a few to add to our bucket!

Once you have a good amount of specimens in your collection bucket, it’s time to find your base. We used wood slabs, white tagboard, and a cleared spot on the ground. If one of your dad’s/brothers’ favorite hobbies isn’t splitting and cutting wood and you don’t have stacks and stacks of it, you can just use the tagboard or the ground.

This was the spot I cleared on the ground. It was muddy and wet, but the best place I could find. So, hopefully, where you live is dry, but otherwise, you can just work with mud, as I did. 😀

The majority of what we picked was pine needles, ferns, moss, acorns, tree bark, and rocks from our creek. We spread it all out on white tagboard on the picnic table.

Moss is so pretty, isn’t it? It’s too cold for there to be any flowers or anything green, so we used lots of moss, and pine needles.

I like this picture a lot for some reason, haha. Mercy found a great way to use acorns in her art which you’ll see later in the post!

This moss reminded me of little trees; Jewel stuck one of these in the center of her mandala.

Time for what we actually made with all of the elements and specimens we collected! I used four pine needles for the center.

I then used pine cones to make a border around the circle. I did the same with the moss. I added some acorns in the middle, and then finished it with that. I kept mine pretty simple, because at this point my hands were getting cold and I didn’t have a ton to work with because it’s winter (I’m definitely going to try it again in the spring or summer!), but if you look on Pinterest or Google, you can find some more complicated and prettier mandalas.

This was Mercy’s lovely idea! She found a smaller piece of wood and wrote her first initial using the tops of acorns. Later, she hot-glued it and hung it up in her room. A super fun and simple idea!

After seeing hers, I made one too!

This one was a bit different, but I just made lines across a few different slabs of wood with moss, acorn tops, and more pine needles.

your turn!

And there we have it, lots of nature art ideas and inspiration! I hope you enjoyed this post and have fun making your own nature art. Make sure to take some time within the next few days to get outside and make some of your art. Before you do that, I’d love to know. . .

Would you try the mandala or acorn-monogram art? Have you made nature art before? Which was your favorite piece of art from this post?

Have a beautiful day, beautiful people!

~Pearl Christine ✨

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