Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) Guides

Maple Leaf DIY Crafting Recipes & How To Get Them [2022]

Maple Leaves are a special autumn seasonal crafting material in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH)! Learn how to get Maple Leaves and all of the Maple Leaf Set items you can craft with them in this guide.

How to Find & Get Maple Leaves

To get Maple Leaves in Animal Crossing: New Horizons naturally, you’ll need to be playing during November 16th to 25th in the Northern Hemisphere or May 16th to 25th in the Southern Hemisphere.

You can also find Mushroom materials and recipes during this time period as well!

Similarly to how Cherry Blossom Petals work during the Spring, you can get Maple Leaves by searching for a large orange leaf falling from the sky on your island during this limited period in the Autumn. It’s random when and where these leaves will fall on your island, so always be on the look out for one to appear!

Note that during this period, there will also be smaller and duller leaves in the air on your island to celebrate the season, but these can’t be caught with your net and used as materials. You’ve got to look for larger and brighter orange  Maple Leaf!

When you do finally spot a Maple Leaf falling in the air, simply equip your Net tool and try catching the orange leaf in the same way that you catch bugs in Animal Crossing: New Horizons! They can be a little trickier to catch than bugs though with how they fall in the air, so it could take some practice to master.

From our experience so far, finding Maple Leaves in the air appears to be neither super common or super rare. You’ll find them from time to time with no issues, but you also won’t be drowning in them everywhere either.

Since the period of time that Maple Leaves can appear is very limited at only about a week and half out of the entire year, we highly suggest catching them every time you spot one. We’ve also observed that they seem to be less common at night sometimes, so it might be worth focusing your hunting during the daytime.

After you’ve caught some Maple Leaves, make sure to shoot down balloons in the sky across your island for a chance of finding DIY Crafting Recipes that can use them. There are 10 different Maple Leaf items to craft in total and we cover all of them later in this guide.

Maple Leaf Sell Price at Nook’s Cranny

Maple Leaves can be sold to Timmy & Tommy at Nook’s Cranny for 200 Bells each at any time. We highly recommend against selling though given their exclusivity — if you have extras, it’s probably best to try trading with a friend.

How to Get Maple Leaves Outside Of Season

If you’d like to craft items that require Maple Leaves and your island isn’t currently in season for them to appear, you can travel to another player’s island that is and catch them there. Alternatively, you may adjust the date and time on your Nintendo Switch to November 16th to 25th in the Northern Hemisphere or May 16th to 25th in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Maple Leaf crafting material can also be kept in your house storage or other places just like any other item, so you can trade with players online outside of the season who have stockpiled the resource.

Maple Leaf Item DIY Crafting Recipes List

There are 10 different Autumn themed items you can exclusively craft with Maple Leaf seasonal materials in Animal Crossing: New Horizons including furniture, wallpaper, flooring, accessories, and more.

In the Version 2.0 Update released during November 2021, a new 10th recipe called the Maple Leaf Rug was introduced to the game. This guide has been updated accordingly.

The complete list below includes all of the Maple Leaf items and their DIY Crafting recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons with photos of each item, the crafting materials you need to make them, and how to unlock the recipes.

How to Craft Autumn Wall

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Autumn Wall by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season.

Craft the Autumn Wall using the following materials and items:

• 10 Maple Leaf
• 5 Wood
• 5 Clump of Weeds

How to Craft Colored-Leaves Flooring

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Colored-Leaves Flooring by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season.

Craft the Colored-Leaves Flooring using the following materials and items:

• 10 Maple Leaf
• 15 Clump of Weeds

How to Craft Leaf Stool

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Leaf Stool by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season. It can customized into Brown, Red, Yellow, and Green colors.

Craft the Leaf Stool using the following materials and items:

• 3 Maple Leaf
• 3 Wood

How to Craft Maple-Leaf Pochette

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Maple-Leaf Pochette by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season.

Craft the Maple-Leaf Pochette using the following materials and items:

• 6 Maple Leaf

How to Craft Maple-Leaf Pond Stone

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Maple-Leaf Pond Stone by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season.

Craft the Maple-Leaf Pond Stone using the following materials and items:

• 10 Stone
• 3 Maple Leaf

How to Craft Maple-Leaf Rug

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Maple-Leaf Rug by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season. This recipe was newly added in the Version 2.0 Update.

Craft the Maple-Leaf Rug using the following materials and items:

• 6 Maple Leaf

How to Craft Maple-Leaf Umbrella

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Maple-Leaf Umbrella by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season.

Craft the Maple-Leaf Umbrella using the following materials and items:

• 7 Maple Leaf

How to Craft Red-Leaf Pile

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Red-Leaf Pile from Isabelle during morning announcements or by shooting down balloons in the sky during Maple Leaf season.

Craft the Red-Leaf Pile using the following materials and items:

• 3 Maple Leaf
• 4 Clump of Weeds

How to Craft Tree’s Bounty Arch

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Tree’s Bounty Arch by shooting down balloons in the sky during Acorns & Pine Cones season. It can customized into Brown and White colors.

Craft the Tree’s Bounty Arch using the following materials and items:

• 4 Pine Cone
• 5 Acorn
• 5 Maple Leaf
• 15 Tree Branch

How to Craft Tree’s Bounty Big Tree

Unlock the DIY Crafting Recipe for Tree’s Bounty Big Tree by shooting down balloons in the sky during Acorns & Pine Cones season. It can customized into Brown and White colors.

Craft the Tree’s Bounty Big Tree using the following materials and items:

• 5 Pine Cone
• 4 Acorn
• 4 Maple Leaf
• 8 Tree Branch
• 4 Clay

Maple Leaf Items & Recipes Complete Checklist

Want to make sure you’ve gotten absolutely all of the Maple Leaf recipes and items Animal Crossing: New Horizons before the season ends? Check out the checklist table below for a summary of every item using Maple Leaves and how to get it.

Use the interactive checkboxes next to each item to keep track of what items you’ve gotten throughout the month and what you’re still missing! Data will be saved to your browser’s storage and retained if you come back to this page.

Item / Recipe	How To Get
Autumn Wall	Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Colored-Leaves Flooring	Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Leaf Stool	Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Maple-Leaf Pochette	Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Maple-Leaf Pond Stone	Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Maple-Leaf Rug	Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Maple-Leaf Umbrella	Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Red-Leaf Pile	Isabelle / Tom Nook During Maple Leaf Season or Balloons During Maple Leaf Season
Tree's Bounty Arch	Balloons During Acorns & Pine Cones Season
Tree's Bounty Big Tree	Balloons During Acorns & Pine Cones Season

Total Materials Needed To Craft All Maple Leaf Items

Looking to craft the entire Maple Leaf set? In the handy table below, you can find a complete summary of how many Maple Leaves and other crafting materials are needed to craft every single item listed above.

How to Get & Learn Maple Leaf DIY Recipes

There are two ways you can find and get new Maple Leaf DIY Crafting Recipes in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but unfortunately it’s mostly dependent on luck taking time and patience.

Morning Isabelle Announcement

Near the beginning of the Maple Leaf season, you should hear from Isabelle in the morning announcements about the new seasonal crafting material and recipes. If you haven’t already learned the Red-Leaf Pile DIY Crafting recipe, she’ll send it to your NookPhone during the announcements.

There’s been a lot of confusion in the community about when or how this morning announcement from Isabelle occurs, but from our knowledge so far, it can only happen when you have no other notable announcements.

In other words, the game seems to use the Maple Leaf recipe announcement as a filler item of sorts when there’s nothing else for Isabelle to talk about! So whenever you have no villagers moving in, buildings opening, or other notable events for her to discuss, you should get the announcement.

Flying Balloon Presents

During the Maple Leaf season, all Balloon Presents flying in the sky over your island have a chance of dropping one of 10 different Maple Leaf DIY Crafting recipes! Just pull out a Slingshot and shoot away when you see one.

Unfortunately, there’s no concrete way to control exactly what you’ll get from balloon presents, so you’ll need to just keep shooting them down until you get lucky. Duplicate crafting recipes are easily possible too and should be expected, so we recommend trying to make trades with friends to complete the collection faster. You may be able to sell any duplicates for a hefty amount online too.

We do have some general tips for how you can most effectively hunt and farm balloon presents though by taking advantage of a few specific mechanics. And for the laziest farming method, check out our Farm DIY Recipe Balloons Easy Using Jail Bars Wall Trick guide here!

New Balloons can spawn every 5 minutes at times ending in a ‘4’ or ‘9’. For example, a balloon could appear at 4:19pm or 4:24pm. By the time it actually reaches your beach though, the time will likely be closer to 4:20pm or 4:45pm.

A Balloon won’t always spawn on these minutes — it’s a random chance as to whether one will actually appear every time. Expect some spawn times to be duds with nothing to see.

The wind direction that Balloons fly in from changes throughout the day. Once you spot the direction that one Balloon flies into your island from, you can expect all Balloons to come from that side for quite some time. Then around 6pm-7pm in the evening, the direction will flip to the opposite.

Walk up and down your beach around spawn time. Now that you have an idea of the current wind direction and when Balloons can spawn, it’s possible to find them with relative ease by pacing up and down the side of your beach where the wind is blowing from when it’s near the possible spawn times ending in ‘4’ and ‘9’.

Turn up your volume and listen carefully. When a Balloon is flying nearby you, a relatively obvious wind sound plays to let you know. This is great when multitasking.

Not From Villagers or Bottles

A common misconception in the Animal Crossing community is that seasonal crafting recipes that can learned by finding villagers crafting in their homes or in message bottles on the beach.

While many other DIY Crafting recipes can be found in this manner, it is not the case for seasonal recipes like the Maple Leaf items. You’ll need to keep shooting down those pesky balloons for your best chance at hunting them down.

Thanks to Mogyay for contributing photos to this guide. If you have any suggestions or spot any errors, please help us out in the comments below so we can address them!