Peppercorn Owls

When I saw that the Plant Wonder Collective November plant of the month was peppercorn I was a bit stymied. I have committed to making a craft with each plant each month and the more culinary herbs are often tough. I had used tri-color peppercorns in my spice mosaic ornaments a few years ago, so I decided to make a twist on those. As I was sifting through cookie cutters looking for inspiration, the owl cutter jumped out at me– the colors were perfect and it would make the cutest winter decoration! And so peppercorn owls were born. They are adorable as ornaments, make the sweetest gift tags, and my favorite way to use them was the owl moon garland I made by stringing them with dried moonwort seedheads. The little owls are super simple to make and perfect project for kids. Owl Moon by Jane Yolen is perfect book pairing if you want to make an afternoon of it. (You can find more book projects here and a winter book countdown here.)

Peppercorn Owls

I made these with both peppercorns and cloves. The peppercorn was easier to work with and I made all of the eyes with them, but nothing beats the smell of cloves. If you use cloves you will need to stick them stem side down and I found I had to pinch off a bit of the stem so that they sat flush which got a little tedious but was doable.

Materials:

• white air dry clay
• whole dry peppercorns
• a skewer or toothpick
• cloves (optional)
• parchment paper (or other surface)
• rolling pin
• owl cookie cutter
• twine
• dried moonwort (also called honesty) seed pods (optional)
• sewing needle (optional)

Method:

Roll out your clay to a 1/4″ thickness. Cut out the desired number of owls with the cookie cutter.

Poke holes at the top of each owl with a skewer that are just large enough to thread your twine through later.

Choose two evenly sized peppercorns for the eyes and push them into the clay. Use the skewer to press a little triangle beak shape right under the eyes.

Press peppercorns into the body. Make sure they are really pressed in, if you do this project with kids have an adult press everything down after the kids are done because I find they don’t always end up making good contact.

Place on a rack or cookie sheet to dry thoroughly around 72 hours depending in your clay.

Thread twine through and tie off to make ornament or tags.

To make the garland, poke a small hole in the center of the moonwort seed pods with a needle.

On a long piece of twine, alternate threading the owls and a few of teh seed pods until you reach the desired length. Knot the ends so that nothing slips off and tie loops for hanging.