Copyright © June Cleaver in yoga pants
Design by Dzignine
Saturday, April 14, 2012

fairy gardens...in which we actually make a fairy garden

So, I was totally the little girl that LOVED fairies. Not Tinkerbell and Disney-fied fairy land but flower fairies, forest fairies, water fairies, from the old story books that the librarians would point me to, when they found out I could read Judy Blume at age 6 (Umm, how about a nice fairy story instead!)

Although - side note - one of these books traumatized me for a few years, it was about these girls who declared, in the 1900s, that fairies were real and took pictures (using fake fairies and their father's camera) and fooled a bunch of people. It totally freaked me out. The idea that they might be real. For some reason I associated this with our basement in our 100 year old house and got the shivers running down there to get some canned peaches for mom for years afterwards. THE FAIRIES ARE GONNA GET ME.

Firmly set in the imagination though, I love fairy worlds. Last year I really wanted to make a sweet little fairy garden, as I wrote about in this post, but my kids refused to be enthusiastic and while I am not above crafting things for my own sake this seemed a little above and beyond reasonable. (Its hilarious to me that that post, which I only wrote about maybe doing something, has received more hits on this blog than anything else...ha ha!)

So I waited.

This year, happily, they are quite into the idea. (YAY, my eight year old self yells...)

So. Here is what we did.

our supplies gathered:
flower seeds, stones bits of wool and fabric and pipe cleaners and wood beads
to make fairies, and paint for a small wooden top to a broken glass
container that looks just like a fairy table :)
 We made an "Easter garden" last Saturday, with crosses and a tomb and moss for grass, so we simply turned it into a garden for fairies. To make the Easter garden I dug out an old cardboard box, that was purchased with canning jars and conviently already wrapped in plastic lining. We filled the box with dirt and dug moss out of our yard (I figured our landlord wouldnt mind as it was killing the grass anyway!). Then we gathered pretty stones to make a walkway.
what the kids HAD been doing

oh a fairy garden? yea, we will do that!

just kidding, we want to paint instead.

fine, you can paint, but lets turn it into an educational thing (if
we are gonna do this homeschool thing, we are gonna DO IT)
"F" is for flower and fairies. the fairies come to kiss all
the flowers and wake them up for spring time!

little man doing his version...

To convert it to a fairy garden we went and collected tree branches, from the lilacs and other bushes outside. Then the kids went and gathered all their pretty bits and pieces, dollhouse tea sets, shiny rocks for "gnome treasure" and so on.

our garden, with twigs and such, and seeds planted.
 Once we planted seeds, and stuck twigs in, and rearranged rocks, we needed inhabitants for our garden. Fairy people. I happened to have little fake flowers to use as caps and wooden beads for heads, with the pipe cleaner as a body and bits of yarn wrapped around I was quickly able to make a little fairy man.


the wings are made from pieces of felted wool, cut into wind shapes

The following is a step by step:
insert pipe cleaner into wooden bead. a hat could easily be made by cutting out a
piece of felt into a flower shape with a hole for the end of the pipe cleaner to bend
through. we later glued hair underneath, out of bits of wool.

the pipe cleaner bent into a body shape.

wings, cut into shape

secured on the fairy with a strand of pink yarn, also wrapping it around the
body and arms.

ready to be dressed.



a felted piece of wool (i needle felted it) to secure
on as a skirt

the final product. a fairy! i needle felted it all in place, including the skirt and wings

fairies relaxing in the final garden, over a cup of tea, at their mushroom tea table
(painted by mama, DONT TOUCH!)


mr gnome was also invited to live in the garden. with some buried treasure.
(only little man knows where it is!)



Fun right? And we can keep changing it with the seasons, and adding more pieces as we go. I will post more pics once the flowers grow. YAY. My 8 year old self rejoices!

(oooooh just discovered this contest on The Magic Onion blog, totally entered. cross your fingers for us! )

so, our original garden got overwatered by some, um, enthustiastic, caretakers
and grew some rather icky mold.
here is our newest one, out in the sun where hopefully our plants will grow
(and drain properly)
little miss is still captivated!

we added a little bark house for the wee folk


marigold sprouts!




good night fairies!

our latest incarnation (mid-June)


6 comments:

  1. I love this Sara! We did one last year after your first post about Fairy gardens. I have to admit though, I think I had more fun with it then Catharina:)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very cool, I love your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My kiddo is into fairies too. We recently saw a movie based on the story of the English kids taking photos of the fairies that you describe - "Fairy Tale, a true story" - and kiddo *so* wanted it to be true. I've heard there's a book out on the subject too - not sure if it's geared to older kids or adults, but I think it exposes the girls' recantation when they're older and may explain how they posed the photos. Either way, sounds interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  4. These are fantastic! What a blast

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a cute fairy garden; I love those fairies and gnome. I am glad the kids got on board this time! :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Love the bark house!! And the fairy is adorable. Great inspiring article. n_n

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...