Making Fairy Garden Accessories E-Book

Anna-Marie Fahmy

• Herausgeber: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 90

Beschreibung

How to Make Backyard Fairy Garden Accessories is a fun and adorable guide to creating little outdoor wonderlands for visiting mythical creatures. Authors Anna-Marie and Andrew Fahmy combine their two passions, the outdoors and crafts, providing step-by-step instructions on how to create one-of-a-kind fairy garden accessories. These projects are beginner-friendly with only one requirement -- bring your imagination. Also included is an inspirational gallery of fairy gardens, houses, and hand-made accessories! Sections of the book include different techniques and materials like working with twigs and sticks, rough and polished rocks, types of moss, acorn caps, and pinecones, and working with glue guns and miniature accessories available at your local craft and hobby stores. Other projects include mini and large fairy houses, a swing, a fire pit, a Gnome garden, as well as tips for lighting your creations. Create an oasis in your own backyard for your visiting mythical friends.

Leseprobe

In Memory of herese Fahmy

© 2024 by Anna-Marie and Andrew Fahmy and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Making Fairy Garden Accessories is an original work, first published in 2024 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. The projects contained herein are copyrighted by the authors. Readers may make these projects for personal use. The projects themselves, however, are not to be duplicated for resale or distribution under any circumstances. Any such copying is a violation of copyright law.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holders.

ISBN 978-1-4971-0396-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023950867

To learn more about the other great books from Fox Chapel Publishing, or to find a retailer near you, call toll-free 800-457-9112 or visit us at www.FoxChapelPublishing.com.

We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected].

Because working with craft tools and other materials inherently includes the risk of injury and damage, this book cannot guarantee that creating the projects in this book is safe for everyone. For this reason, this book is sold without warranties or guarantees of any kind, expressed or implied, and the publisher and the author disclaim any liability for any injuries, losses, or damages caused in any way by the content of this book or the reader’s use of the tools needed to complete the projects presented here. The publisher and the author urge all readers to thoroughly review each project and to understand the use of all tools before beginning any project.

Introduction

Welcome to our fairy garden book! We’re so excited to share our love of making fairy homes and furniture with you.

We’ve always liked working with our hands and being creative, and we also enjoy teaching and working with people. We met volunteering at a summer camp where we were counselors and ran outdoor activities for youth. Being outside and working with others got us into another hobby: lapidary, the art of carving and polishing rocks into wearable jewelry. We liked this hobby so much that we started teaching lapidary classes at a local community center in southern California. While teaching classes at this center, we discovered that there was another popular activity happening in the classroom next to ours—fairy gardening! The community center even had a fairy trail outside. We were intrigued and wanted to know more.

Fast forward a few years, and we got engaged (Andrew proposed under twinkly fairy lights, of course). While we were deep in wedding planning, we decided to make most of the decorations and centerpieces by hand (“DIY,” as it’s commonly referred to). And because we loved the space and it meant a lot to us, we ended up getting married at the center where we taught our classes! We spent hours perusing craft stores and exploring the outdoors to find what we needed for the wedding, and after everything was said and done, there was quite a bit of leftover material— wood, moss, rocks, and fairy lights. That’s when we had the idea that it would be great to start some kind of craft project.

Attracted to the magic of the fairy garden world, we decided to dive in. The beauty of fairy gardening is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t need to focus too much on miniature scaling or perfect borders. You can get messy. Break a stick while you’re working on a project? No worries, now you’ve got a new shape. Got too much glue on your fairy door? Not a problem, just cover it up with some moss. Fairy gardening is all about freedom and creativity. Find inspiration in this book and other sources, but don’t limit yourself just by the photos you see. Follow our directions, but go off course to make each item your own. Go wild and explore. Take an adventure to your local park or craft store to find unusual and unique items. Your own personal touch is what makes this hobby so magical, and by all means, bring some children along. There is nothing more magical than spending time with children and helping them create their own personal fairy land.

While we started out calling this our hobby, it has evolved into a sustainable source of income that generates over $1,000 a month in Etsy sales. If you’ve picked up this book, you’re probably thinking about building a fairy home, or maybe even your own fairy garden. Maybe you’re looking to start your own business, or you want to gift this book to someone who also cherishes the magic of the fairy world.

We’re so glad you’re here, and we’re excited to share our love of the magical fairy world with you.

Anna-Marie and Andrew Fahmy

Table of Contents

Introduction

Getting Started

Materials

Tools

Techniques

Gallery

Projects

Doors

Blue Door

Red Door

Door with Steps

Hanging Door

Hobbit Door

Houses

Gnome Planter House

Small Lighted House

Large Lighted House

Secret Staircase House

Furniture

Fairy Lamp

Fairy Desk

Fairy Bookshelf

Table for Two

Garden Swing

Fairy Chair

Accessories

Gnome Ladder

Fairy Mailbox

Trail Sign

Fairy Window

Fire Pit

Gnome Frame Garden

Wishing Well

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

Getting Started

Before you begin, find a suitable space where you can craft and gather all of the materials you will need. Whether you have a craft bin of supplies, a shelf, or an entire room, it doesn’t matter! Find what works best for you, but the great thing about these projects is they require little working space and simple tools and materials, so you can accomplish them anywhere you like.

Materials

One of the best parts about building fairy homes and furniture is the adventure in finding all the materials! We like to use both store-bought materials and materials that we find in nature. Over the next few pages, you’ll learn about different types of materials you can find outside and use, from wood and rocks to nature bits, like acorns and miniature pine cones. You’ll learn about all the scavenging we do at stores, too. We find many of our materials at craft stores and larger chain stores. Wherever you shop or explore, keep your imagination open. You never know what you’ll find and how it can be used!

Wood

Wood is an integral part of building and furnishing fairy homes. We rely on so many different types of wood to build our furniture, doors, homes, and more. We find wood in nature, collecting twigs and other nature bits, but also, we find a lot of our wood at arts and craft stores and even larger chains. Using both natural wood and store-bought wood gives us the flexibility to be creative and think outside the box when building our fairy homes and furniture.

Craft Sticks

Also known as “Popsicle sticks,” craft sticks are so useful for building fairy homes and furniture. Craft sticks are easy to find, are inexpensive, and provide a strong and solid foundation to almost any project. We will use a variety of craft sticks—different sizes, colored, and uncolored—throughout the projects in this book.

Sizes

• Small

• Medium

• Large

Colors

• Uncolored

• Colored

We use both uncolored and colored craft sticks for our projects in this book. Most craft sticks that you’ll find at the store will be uncolored. For these sticks, wood stains work great to color them, and we’ll show you how to do that in the Techniques section (here). You can also easily find sticks at the store that are already colored.

Twigs

We love using natural sticks and twigs in our projects. Walking around your local park or exploring a new trail is a great way to find all types of twigs for your fairy homes and furniture. We like to have a variety of twigs for different projects.

•Curvy: Curvy twigs are helpful in making fairy homes, and especially when making round fairy doors, as these twigs more easily conform to the shape of the door. Curvy twigs are also great to add some whimsy to a mundane item—why have a straight ladder when you can have a curvy one!

•Straight: Straight twigs are versatile and can be used in almost any project. They’re especially helpful when building structures that call for twigs lined up right next to each other, like the seat of a fairy chair or the roof of a wishing well.

•L-Shaped: Finding twigs that are in a “L” shape is always a great score, meaning that one part of the twig has branched off from the main stem. This kind of shape is especially helpful when making the Fairy Lamp (here) because the stick is already a natural build for a floor lamp!

•Y-Shaped: The more a twig branches off, the more room you have to play with on that twig. Using Y-shaped twigs is best for items like fairy signs, miniature music stands, and bird baths. In this book, we’ll show you how to make a miniature Trail Sign (here). The “Y” shape makes it easy to rest something on, such as a Shrinky Dink sign, on a stick. We also love using miniature birds in our items, and a “Y” shape allows for a perfect bird resting spot.

Unfinished Wood Slices

Also known as “tree cookies,” unfinished wood slices can be found in nature, but we don’t usually recommend that—you’d need a saw in order to cut wood slices off a log! A much easier way to get wood slices is at a craft store or online. Wood slices are useful for making fairy projects, especially for fairy doors. We like to use these slices as porches for our fairy doors to rest on. Wood slices are also useful as stands and you can drill holes to put sticks inside, like for making a welcome sign. We’ll use various sizes of wood slices— small, medium, large, round, and oblong—in the projects in this book.

Balsa Sheets & Craft Wood

You can find balsa wood at your local craft store or even large retail stores. We like to use balsa wood when making fairy furniture because it’s thicker and wider than a craft stick, so it’s useful to serve as a platform or shelf. Also, if you’ll be drilling or carving holes in wood, balsa is quite soft and easy to work with.

Square Pegs & Connectors

We find these small square pegs and connectors at our local craft store. You can create endless projects with these pieces; in this book, we’ll show you how to make a Fairy Desk (here) using them.

Rocks