A Fairy Subdivision

My niece and I have had a lot of fun making Fairy Houses from Laura Denison's (Following the Paper Trail) Summer Fairy House pattern.  It was a really great construction project - both of us learned some new techniques and we exercised our creative muscle by adding some unique touches to the houses (wait until you see what Sarah did inside her house!).  Here are the houses we made - Sarah says hers really looks like summer - it's the sunny house in the middle.

And here are the houses "after dark".  We added LED tea lights behind the windows so the fairies in the tower and front room would be illuminated.

Here are individual shots of the three houses.

First Sarah's house... if you look closely, you might be able to spy a fairy in the tower window and one in the front window.

And these fairies have a faithful companion - see him lying on the front lawn?  Sarah found a small figurine just the right size for her house.

A few dried flowers in the chimney complete the house.

Sarah used DCWV's Painted Petals stack on both the inside and outside of her house.

And now the green and red houses...

I used two of Prima's paper collections that coordinated well together - Fairy Rhymes and Finnabair Vintage Vanity - on both the inside and outside of each house.

The windows have "leaded" lines - some faux stained glass leading.  I also followed the pattern and added shutters on the front window.

I used Martha Stewart's Vine Trim punch around the tower and the top of the chimney.

Visible on the chimney (but also around the tower and the porch roof) are several Prima flower stems.

The base is covered in felt and then a gazillion paper flowers were inked and scattered around.

We both followed Laura's pattern pretty closely, but then added a few things.

Each house has a front door that opens, which you can see here on the green house.

We cut a rounded door as the pattern indicated, but before attaching it we added a doorway to the tower and a Graphic 45 Fairy image inside.  The door is hinged very simply with two small hidden strips of Tyvek. The door stays closed because a couple of magnets are hidden beneath the paper.

You may be able to see that there is a front step in front of the house.  It is covered with paper embossed with a Tim Holtz Texture Fade that looks like snakeskin (I can't find the name).

Here is a closeup of the tower window on Sarah's house.  You can see the texture on the window which she did by putting white glue on one piece of plastic, squishing another piece of plastic on top and then removing that 2nd piece and allowing both to dry.

I experimented with several ways to include a fairy image so it could be seen from all sides.   The image was printed twice (once reversed) on transparency film.  Then the inside of each piece was painted with white acrylic paint so the fairy would show up.  The two images were glued together around the edges with Glossy Accents.

We also wanted to light up the tower. A few inches below the base of the tower window we added a platform for two LED tea lights.

In order to have access to the lights, the image needed to be out of the way, so we made the roof removable and attached the image to the bottom on the diagonal.

In this photo you can see the roof being lifted off and one of the tea lights is visible in the window.

Here on the green house you can see we added a fairy as Laura suggested.  There was just enough room to add a couple lights in here too.  In order to access the lights, the fairy image is attached to a door which opens from the inside of the house.

You'll see a detail of this door opened in one of the interior photos of Sarah's house below.





The green and red houses currently do not have anything inside them - maybe a mini album in the future?
Time will tell...But Sarah's house, now that's a different story.

Sarah new from pretty much the beginning that she was going to furnish the inside of her house, so she decided to cut a large window in the back wall so you could see inside.

She then created a little flower garden to highlight the opening.

If you peak around the flowers, you may just be able to see hints of the furnishings in the next photos.



Here's the inside of Sarah's house.  What you can't see in these photos is that there is a ceiling light.  She made a box to slide in one of the LED tea lights so the room can be illuminated.  It's really clever.

She  rummaged through drawers in the craft room to spark ideas for the furnishings and here is how she created each item.

There's a bed made out of a small mints tin and covered in fabric.  It also has a small fabric pillow. The headboard is a chipboard scroll.

Next to the bed is a floor lamp made with a skewer, wheel for a base and a wood bowl covered in Stickles for the shade.

She made a bookcase out of the inside of a matchbox and cut scraps of chipboard for books which were colored with Copic markers.  A few extra books are on the nightstand at the front of the photo, which is a small wood cube.

The sink is another wood bowl with a bent wire faucet and a small round canape cutter for a base.

Another wood bowl with some colored pearls and plates made out of punched circles and colored with Copics decorate the table which is made out of the other part of the matchbox. The stools are wood buttons.

The artwork is decorative stamps.

In this photo you can see the door open to give access to the lights in the front of the house.

This door is hinged with Tyvek and held in place with magnets








Here's a video tour of the fairy houses.  If you would like to make your own fairy house, the pattern is available in Laura Denison's shop - here is a direct link.