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Sunday, August 17, 2014

Faerie Gardens, Part the First


Not long ago, I got sucked into a Pinterest black hole, completely egged on by friends who shall remain nameless.

Go on Pinterest and search Fairy Gardens and Fairy Houses.  Then come back here.  No, wait! read this first, because otherwise you'll never come back.  You'll spend a month or two pinning cool pictures, and then you'll go to the craft store and find things that could be made into Fairy Houses, and then you'll spot the wonderful bark that fell off the neighbor's tree in the last storm and is just lying there! and you'll forget all about looking at the pictures of what I did! So, read this first, and then go search Pinterest.  And then take lots of pictures so I can read about your adventures... unless by then I'm off on another journey of my own.

After the Pinterest binge, I ended up at Michael's finding a lovely bird house.  And stones.  And grout, because grout.


And Popsicle sticks!  Because the little hole for the birdie was not an adequate door, and a fae will need windows, right?  Right.


We will not discuss the damage to my thumbs from trying to use an X-acto knife to mitre the corners of the window frame.  I have no regrets.

The grouting process took a couple of weeks.  I wasn't working on it solidly all that time, but I could only really do one side at a time.  I glued the rocks on first with tacky glue (translated into French: Colle inélégante.  I love this fact, don't ask me why).  I had to do one side, let it dry (because, the dripping! oh, it was extreme!)  Then I used some Martha Stewart grout, because that is what the craft store had, to fill the spaces in between the stones.  I could sort of do two sides at a time, but the grout got dry and crumbly and I ended up going back to redo the second side with wetter, less crumbly grout later.  

Once the grout was on and dry and patched and repaired and dry again, I went to the neighbor's to collect the awesome bark.  I hadn't thought through how I'd attach it to the roof... but I wound up cutting it into shingles and only using a small amount, which means I have some left for making other cool things later.


I sacrificed a lot of Colle Inélégante to the task of roofing the house.  I'm going to need a new bottle soon!

I found a cool, very curvy piece for the ridge post.


And then David and I went over to the garden store and picked out our stuff implements of fairy gardening: a 1-cubic-foot planter, soil, and four awesome succulent plants.  


We made a path from stones, planted the plants, transplanted some lovely climby green succulent foliage that has found a home in one of my old flowerpots and grows little tiny yellow flowers, put in a picket fence, and voilà! A faerie garden!  We still have a couple of things we want to add... because what fairy doesn't want a gazing ball and a bird bath! but this is our first installment.  And I'm pleased with how it turned out!