Highfield Hall Fairy Houses, Part 1

Now that I've finally joined the land of the living again, and since we had a rare sunny but dry day, I headed down to Highfield Hall in Falmouth to check out the fairy houses, which they do every other year, around the grounds and inside.  

I got there a little after 10 and was surprised to see quite a few people already there.

The artists do such a wonderful job and I wonder how some of them survive rain and wind since they are displayed from June to September.  

I promised myself I wasn't going to take a ton of pics but that ship sailed.  I shot 196, of which 195 made the cut.  How did I used to live within the confines of 24 and 36 exposure film.

This was clever, using blue hydrangeas for the water.

I don't know if the artist hand carved this but it's exquisite!

This is just one post of about five.

Fall Fairy Garden

Really enjoyed making the summer themed fairy garden a few months ago, so I decided I wanted to make one for fall.  I found half pumpkins at Michael's Crafts and knew that'd be perfect to hold the garden.

I put more oasis in the bottom, which was hard to cut to fit in the curves.  Then I tucked a bunch of moss around it and stuffed a coloured leaf vine around the edges.  

The house is made from another toilet paper roll, but I wanted to make it wider so I sliced up the side and then added a bit of a paper towel roll inside.  First I put the door on, then it took about a week to add all the stones because they had to dry before the next row.  The roof was also time consuming. The leaves didn't want to cooperate being glued onto a cone shape!  Plus I had to use fabric glue which has awful fumes.  The yellow marble in the acorn cap is supposed to be an outside light.  I also couldn't get the house to balance very well on the moss so I covered a mason jar lid with flatter moss and then glued that to the moss in the pumpkin, and glued the house to the lid.  It's a little sturdier.

Pilfered that tree from my decorations that I put out on top of the little bookcase.  I made the fence from craft sticks and large skewer/toothpicks.  I did a grey paint wash on them and also on the pieces I used for the door.  The bundle of firewood is out of focus, but they are twigs from my yard.

A closeup of the door with some silver beads, and the round window with lace curtain.

Now I am going to have to make a winter and spring garden as well!

My First Fairy Garden

I haven't been able to get the Highfield Hall exhibit out of my head and have been dying to try my hand at a fairy garden.  

Found this old wood basket in the crawl space under my mom's house and she said I could have it, so I cleaned it up.

My first thought was to build the garden with the basket tipped on the side but I couldn't get my items to fit well, so it was back to being flat.  The only thing Russell asked me was to try not to glue anything to the wood b/c it's such a nice antique piece and he didn't want the integrity ruined.

After googling some pictures and ideas, I went to the craft store and got blocks of green oasis, a moss mat and some fake ivy and flowers.  Those fit nicely into the bottom of the basket.  All I glued was the oasis blocks to each other and then tuck the moss over it, and stuff ivy into the gaps and between some of the wood slats.  

The house is made from about 2/3 of a toilet paper roll, on which I glued wooden sticks, which were done with a light brown paint wash and cut to fit prior to gluing.  The roof is made from brown card stock formed into a cone with moss glued on it, and an acorn cap on top.  I had that metal fairy door for years, just waiting for the right project.  I added a purple metal flower to the top of it, and also glued some light green moss to the roof (which I plucked off a tree in my yard).  Then I glued the whole house to a rock, and put more light green moss on either side to hide the glue that oozed out from under the house.  Dipped into my rock collection for the stepping stones.  All are glue to the moss.

The house looked funny without windows so I used a couple silver metal gears, behind which I glued white lace to look like curtains inside.

Here is the yard.

Basket of flowers which really aren't to scale when you look at the other pieces but hey, it's a fairy garden.  Magic is at work!

Wind chimes made from a bead cap, chain, bugle beads and wire.

Finally, a garden bench, made from a silver finding, wood and silver beads, and a gazing ball made from an orange bead on top of a clear push pin.  There are a lot of things you can buy for your fairy garden projects, but I really had fun poking through all my bead and finding boxes to see what I could make myself.  

These are addicting....I want to make more!