Animal Crossing: New Horizons features many seasonal materials for crafting collectible DIY furniture, including the maple leaf-related ones. However, maple leaf season doesn’t last for long, so it’s important to know the timeframe and where to find these elusive maple-leaf DIY cards. Fall is coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean your maple leaf-hunting adventures have to. Here’s a guide on where to find maple leaves, how to collect them, and the different kinds of recipes you can expect to find.
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Where to Find Maple Leaves
Maple leaf season lasts from November 16 to 25 in the Northern Hemisphere and from May 16 to May 25 in the Southern Hemisphere. If you’re within those dates, players should see hovering red maple leaves alongside other leaf particles. These leaves don’t disappear right away like the other falling leaves, which tend to be smaller and quickly fade into the air. There is no designated place to find them on your island. Just keep walking and one will eventually fall from the sky.
At time of writing, maple leaf season has already come and gone for Northern Hemisphere players. However, some are still jumping back in time and venturing to other islands to finish collecting maple leaves and recipes. You can visit another player’s island whose time still falls during maple leaf season or try your luck with Kapp’n Island Tours. Kapp’n sometimes brings players to maple leaf islands, but it’s not guaranteed.
How to Catch Maple Leaves
You can catch maple leaves with your net like you do with butterflies and other flying insects. Mind your swing, though. If you miss too many times or wait too long, the leaf will disappear. Maple leaves fall consistently enough that one will appear if you just keep walking around the island, though. They should pop up every couple minutes or so, if not sooner.
Where to Find Maple Leaf DIY Recipes
Players get at least one DIY recipe without any hassle: the Red-Leaf Pile. Isabelle gives you this recipe after a morning announcement when the player first logs in during maple leaf season.
Unfortunately, finding the rest of the maple leaf DIY recipes is more of a game of chance rather than an actual hunt. Much like other holiday-themed DIY recipes, maple leaf-related recipes come from balloon presents. Players have to shoot them down to claim the items. Balloons are rarer than the maple leaves themselves and the item inside might not even be a DIY recipe.
Alternatively, if you don’t mind talking to strangers online, you can check in at an Animal Crossing community on Reddit or elsewhere to see if someone has maple leaf DIY recipes to spare. This should speed up your collecting time considerably, especially if you meet a generous player who’s been playing the game for hours during maple leaf season.
List of Maple Leaf DIY Recipes
The Animal Crossing community has found a total of ten maple leaf DIY recipes at this time. Most of them feature maple-leaf shaped or maple-leaf decorated furniture. Keep in mind that these aren’t recipes that solely rely on maple leaves and might require other materials too. Tree’s Bounty Big Arch and Tree’s Bounty Big Tree need other seasonal items like pine cones and acorns.
Here’s our full list of Animal Crossing maple leaf DIY recipes. Check off the recipes that you’ve found and crafted to keep track of your collection.
| Recipe Name | Ingredients |
| Autumn Wall | 10 Maple Leaf 5 Wood 5 Clump of Weeds |
| Colored Leaves Flooring | 10 Maple Leaf 15 Clump of Weeds |
| Leaf Stool | 3 Maple Leaf 3 Wood |
| Maple-Leaf Pochette | 6 Maple Leaf |
| Maple-Leaf Pond Stone | 3 Maple Leaf 10 Stone |
| Maple-Leaf Rug | 6 Maple Leaf |
| Maple-Leaf Umbrella | 7 Maple Leaf |
| Red-Leaf Pile | 3 Maple Leaf 4 Clump of Weeds |
| Tree’s Bounty Big Arch | 4 Pine Cone 5 Acorn 5 Maple Leaf 15 Tree Branch |
| Tree’s Bounty Big Tree | 5 Pine Cone 4 Acorn 4 Maple Leaf 8 Tree Branch 4 Clay |
Other Considerations
Maple leaf catching and DIY recipe crafting doesn’t have to be complicated. However, it might take a while to complete the full maple-leaf collection considering the RNG with balloon presents. You can still time travel to collect missing recipes or stock up on maple leaves, though. Just don’t time travel when you have turnips in storage or they WILL rot.
Don’t forget to check out our other Animal Crossing: New Horizons guides content for the upcoming season! After maple leaves, you can expect snowman, snowflake, or holiday-themed DIY decor sure to come in time for end-of-year holidays. Until then, pocket some shrooms, shake some trees, and enjoy the transition into winter wonderland.
