Project Fairy House

I love all things fairy and so a few years ago, my husband brought home some pieces of tree stumps that his workplace was getting rid of. It was later, after the wood had been left in the shed to dry, we decided to make a Fairy House. One Sunday afternoon, my husband made a start and built the foundations for it and stairs to the first floor. It was left after that and sat in our front room on display in our fireplace from 2012 right through to the first week of August this year 2017. We never got around to finishing it off, until this year. Many inquisitive people would look at it and wonder what it was. Every summer holiday I would make plans to complete it, but would get distracted by other things. Finally, three weeks ago, after coming back from a wondrous holiday in Rome, I was inspired and insisted we get started on the completion of the Fairy House.

I was so excited at the prospect of making the fairy house. I was transported back to age 6 when I remember always wanting a doll house of my very own. I could recall getting empty cardboard boxes and stacking one on top of the other to make the floors and using bits from around the house for furniture: matchboxes; sticks; old pieces of cloth; sweet wrappers etc… such fond memories. My tiny hands would try to fold thick cardboard strips into a fan shape for steps. My mum sewed a lot and she would get through cotton reels quickly, so I would collect them and turn them into stools. Wow, I was quite good at improvising even at that age. We didn’t have much so imagination was essential to get rid of boredom in those days without television.

We went to the countryside looking for bark, dry pieces of wood and moss, anything that would enhance the earthiness of the house. I wanted it to look as natural as possible. We brought a bag of small stones from our local DIY shop, and enough glue sticks to build a multi-storey tower block. THEN WE WERE READY.

Firstly, the walls were built, using small stones and glue. This was the hardest part as we spent around 15 excruciating hours squeezing glue from my glue gun, whilst my husband carefully placed the stones into the lava liquid, gaining a few blisters to show for his effort. I stayed up late into the wee hours of the first night trying to complete the walls as I was desperate to get started on the fun stuff. During the day, while my husband was at work, I would begin on the house around 11am and would be standing all day until 12pm. I was so engrossed in the fairy house that I would not notice the time – it seemed to fly.  As well as using material we collected from the woods, I also raided my art cupboard and bead boxes and made cute bottles, vases and lamp shades for the bedside table, the dressing table, and the shelves in the sitting room. I used wood skewers to frame part of a greeting card to look like a painting hung on a wall. I also carved out two small pencils from twigs, made a writing book again from an old greeting card for the cover, inside I wrote a cute message from a fairy.  My son cut branches of trees into small circular cut offs with his electronic saw thingamajig… sorry not the technical name for it… he also cut out roof tiles too… so handy... I had to use my sewing skills to make a quilt and pillow for the bed. I even made some hangers out of wire that hung from cufflinks that were given to me by my hubby… so kind… he was really getting into it. He would come home weary from work, but could not wait to see what progress I had made. Then he would make comments like – “how is the fairy going to climb the steps if they are wonky?” “The space around the bed is not big enough for the fairy to walk around.” The remarks just amused me no end and I would have to remind him that we were not going to have real fairies moving in to it any time soon. It was as though he had morphed into this small child. I thoroughly recommend this for those of you who want to bring the child out in someone… do it… I dare you... Oh, by the way he wanted to make another one after this one. Who would’ve thought eh!

Overall, in total, I spent around two weeks with an average of around twelve hours a day on this project.  It was a labour of love and worth every minute spent on it. I want to say thank you to my hubby for thinking practically and burning his fingers for me and my son for being the wood cutter for the day.

I have had some wonderful feedback from friends and family who have seen it. Especially my eldest son who was on holiday when I put the pictures up on Facebook and could not wait to see it. He went gaga over it and commissioned me to help him jazz up his DND gaming board which has buildings and various scenes on it. Here we go again, another project in the pipeline.

So here it is, my first very own Fairy House. It was a long time in the making, but well worth the wait. It is now standing proudly on a small table in my front room, measuring just over 3 ½ feet high. Here are some pictures of the different stages of development.

Hope you like it
Samira xx

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