Fairy Houses

After my trip to Scotland, I came back to the states fully believing that fairies exist. Scotland is such beautiful, and misty countryside, that I fully believe if ever magically fairies and unicorns existed, they would certainly come from there.

I decided I needed a little piece of that kind of magic in my life. And I needed motivation to weed my garden area of my yard. So I decided to try to make my own little fairy house. The goal of this project was to only use materials I could find in my yard. I try to be frugal, but I also wanted to challenge myself in being creative. So here is a fairly step by step process of how my fairy house, which escalated into a fairy castle, came to life.


Materials:
Water bottles - I decided to use these bottles as my structural base. These I had to buy.
Gorrilla glue - This stuff can glue cement together, so it's weather proof. It does not come off your  
                        hands either.
Sticks - All the sticks I used came from my yard.
Rocks - I spent a lot of time rummaging through my garden area for flat pebbles. You need a lot.
Mulch - I had a bag of left over mulch from previous gardening projects.
Black gardening mesh - this is used to put down on the lawn/ garden to help prevent weeds from
growing. I had this left over in my garage.
Craft supplies: I used whatever else I could find in my left over scrap bins. Things that came in  
                       handy were plastic flowers and raffia.

I walked through the water isle at the store, and decided I like the shape of Fiji water bottles for what I hand in mind. I bought three of them.
Once all the water had been drunk (I drink a lot of water so it didn't go to waste), I peeled off the stickers (which I shouldn't have done), and with a black marker marked on the bottle where I wanted windows and doors.

 I also had to plan out where the bottles would attach to each other.

Next, I cut out the holes for the windows. This was a bit tricky, but I managed to avoid cutting myself. Once those where cut out, I moved on to the sticks I gathered. I broke them up into small thin pieces, and glued them across the window openings in a mesh, basket weave pattern that I liked.

Through this entire process, I used only gorilla glue. It doesn't dry very quickly, so putting this project together was a slow process. Having multiple bottles to work on helped kill time while other parts were drying.

Once I had my sticks placed on all the windows, I began gluing rocks to the bottles. I learned the hard way that the rocks tended to slide right off the water bottle's slick surface.

 Leaving the label on the bottle would have helped give the rocks something less slick to adhere too. I found some black mesh in my garage that's used in gardening to help kill weeds. I ended up gluing the mesh to the water bottles, then gluing the rocks on top of that. It made things so much easier.



With the rocks being added on, my house was slowly beginning to take shape. I really had no idea how it would turn out. It was a very long and tedious process of gluing rocks onto the bottles. It's like a puzzle, trying to find rock pieces that would fit nicely together without leaving giant gaps.

Once that was in place, I began making the windows a bit more decorative. I used a piece of mulch to make the flower box sitting under the window. I found some little plastic flower leftovers in my craft box from some long ago project. They worked out perfect for my little flower boxes.

The brown framing the window is raffia. Again, I rummaged through my house for supplies I could find to do what I wanted. I didn't like the way sticks or mulch looked dressing the windows, but I found raffia helped me get what I was looking for. Because the glue does not dry clearly, throughout the house are these white splotches. That's the glue expanding as it dried. Turns out I liked the look it added to the whole thing.

Next, I worked on the doors. It took a bit of trial and error to get it looking the way I wanted. I used sticks and bark to make those happen. I decided they needed a little overhang as well.

I added some extra plastic leaves I had on hand just for color. Also to hide the parts I didn't think were so pretty. I used sticks to build the porches, and wrap around walkway. I also added some rock steps leading up to the main door. Once I had the houses decorated and finished to the way I wanted, I began to put the roof together.

The roof is made only of mulch, using stick frames as support. This part was a bit tricky. I didn't have the patience to measure it out as accurately as I should have, which made the process a bit more frustrating and tedious. But eventually I got it all done.

I'm pretty happy with the final result. It turned out a lot cuter than I anticipated, which was a fun surprise. But it took a whole lot longer than I anticipated it too.

The one thing I wish I'd thought of earlier was the roof part. I should have made the roofs detachable. Then I could put a tea light inside the house, and make it flicker with light on the inside. Next time.