How to make a fairy house AND a happy girl!

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies."   -James Matthew Barrie

And so it is that we have fairy folk that are in need of some prime real estate!  Miss Piggy has a love affair going with fairies.  And really who can blame her?  They are beautiful, little creatures with wicked smiles and mischievous ways.  Remind you of anyone in particular?  She had begged for fairy houses at Christmas.  She found some in a catalog that were made of felt and were approximately $30 a piece PLUS shipping!  And they were ridiculously small.  Then a friend of mine recently posted about a fairy house kit she had purchased to build with her daughter and it was amazingly cute with the rocks and acorn shells and moss.  I got to thinking, why couldn't I fashion one of these?  I mean hell, I've got a glue gun.  I've got sticks and rocks.  I've got some leftover silk flowers and floral moss from various projects.  So off I went for the perfect form for the main structure.  I debated using old oatmeal boxes that I've saved for projects, but really wasn't interested in painting it or gluing paper around it, so I headed to Jo-Ann fabrics to see what they had.  As it turns out, they had just what I was looking for and they were only $3 (and I had a coupon)!

I gathered all of my tools... forms, matboard, silk flowers, floral wet foam, small tree branches, moss, scissors, nippers, box cutter, glue gun and a small bit of ribbon for embellishment.

 First thing I did was cut out a door and window, then I glued the form onto the matboard.  While that was drying, I took off the lid and decorated the "roof".  I chose to use leaves and small flowers.

 I made sure that the fairy had a nice little bed of leaves to sleep on in her new home.  Luckily fairies are pretty modest when it comes to furnishings as they spend most of their time out and about playing tricks on folks!

 I took sticks, cut them down to size and glued them, as well as some silk leaves, around the house.  Then I glued some ribbon around the edge of the roof.  As it happens, I found the most perfect little bird in some of my art supplies and the Piggy LOVED it!  Now the fairy has a pet!

I thought bluebells would make the perfect doorbell!

Now it was time to make the fairy a garden.  Fairies, according to my daughter, LOVE flowers and they need to have smooth rocks to use as furniture in the garden.  So I made a path out of sticks and I glued some brown and orange leaves (that had obviously fallen from the trees in the fall).  Then I glued a small rectangle of wet foam under the window and proceeded to fill it with colorful flowers so the fairy would have a nice window box!  Piggy decided there needed to be berries there too, since fairies prefer to eat ripe berries.  Next I glued a ton of moss all over the matboard.  And the finishing touch was adding some smooth, black rocks to the garden.  Here is the finished product WITH the happy fairy!  (Feel free to click on the pics to see it in more detail!)

Side-view

Now we have a happy fairy and a happy girl.  She loves it!  From what I understand there are other fairies that will come to live here soon.  So I guess I better tackle the tower next weekend so we have room for everyone!  And in case you were wondering, the cost of this lovely fairy house was just under $12.  Granted I had some of the supplies, but really you could use just about anything.  And the supplies I did buy will make MANY more fairy houses!

Once the tower is done, our next project will be to build some fairy houses in the garden.  I hear it is good luck to have them there!  Maybe they can summon some dragonflies, lacewings and ladybugs!