How to Build a Fairy Garden House

Fairy houses have become a very popular addition to gardens over the past few years. These accessories can be plain or elaborate, and add a visually pleasing element to any garden, especially miniature ones. Fairy houses are made with natural materials that are easily found in your backyard, and blend into the garden, making it look as if a fairy built the house out of items found there. Legend has it that if you place a fairy house in your garden a fairy might come and live in it, bringing luck and magic to the garden and its owner.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Wood glue
• Birdhouse, biodegradable milk carton, pressed paper egg carton or other building material
• Natural items such as moss, bark, leaves, grapevine tendrils, pebbles and twigs
• Cardboard rolls from paper towels or toilet tissue
• Paper
• Pencil

1. Find or make a basic structure such as a birdhouse or make your own out of wood, a biodegradable milk carton or a pressed paper egg carton. Cut holes in the structure for a door or two and some windows.

2. Gather together a number of different materials from nature. It is important that the materials you select will look natural to the landscape. Items such as birch bark, moss of different kinds, dried flowers, dried leaves, pebbles, pine cones, seashells, feather, rocks and wood chips make excellent fairy house material.

3. Using paper and pencil, draw out a basic design for your fairy house. It can be as simple or as elaborate as you would like. Be creative, but realistic. You want to make sure that you design something that is possible for you to build.

4. Begin adding details to your basic structure. You can make towers out of cardboard rolls from paper towels or toilet paper, add shutters or "window boxes" from small pieces of wood or glue two structures together to make your house look wider or taller. Remember that you want it to look pretty, but it should not be too big.

5. Begin gluing your natural materials to your structure in a way that pleases your eye. Try wood chips or pieces of bark for shingles, make a thatched roof from dried wheat grass or moss or build a chimney from pebbles.

6. After your house dries, place it in a sheltered spot in the garden to protect it. If you like, add some tiny plants and miniature flowers around it for landscaping. You can make a pathway from pebbles and maybe even add a tiny mailbox.

7. If you are especially creative, make furniture for your house by buying cheap dollhouse furniture or by making your own out of twigs, wood and rocks glued or tied together.

8. 
   Fairies near a Fairy house

   Leave the house alone and let the fairies find it.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure that your glue has dried completely before you put your house outside, otherwise it might not hold together if it gets damp or wet.
• Make sure that you do not use sharp things like staples or materials made out of plastic or non-biodegradable material that might harm any curious birds or animals that might wander by to explore the house.

References

• Do You Believe in Fairies?
• Mother Earth's Garden - My Visit to a Fairy House
• Biuld your own fairy house (with help from Disney)