Fairy Garden Kit & My Debut

Well, Mamma took to blogging like nobody’s business! I, on the other hand, ended up being very busy this past month winding up a kitchen remodel and did not have time for much else except putting together a birthday gift for a young friend of ours, Anne. My first post will be about her gift.  

I really love the idea of making gifts but, usually, I don’t come up with an idea until the last minute… Which means I don’t make anything and just live with the fact that I have a disappointing lack of time management skills. Well, this time, I thought of an idea the day before Anne’s birthday party and was actually able to make it happen!

I had just seen the animated movie, Epic, and had fairies on my mind. Anne likes fairies as well so I decided to make her a Fairy Garden Kit. I searched around to see what kits are on the internet. Most of the fairy gardens I saw were already arranged but this one from Pinterest caught my attention.

Fairy Garden in a Box

It’s from Playful Learning Ecademy. I like that it allows the gift recipient to create his or her own fairy garden. I am all about kids using their imaginations instead of having everything spelled out for them!

Putting a kit together was pretty simple. I liked the box used in Playful Learning’s kit but I didn’t have one. So, I found the perfect sized basket in the garage from a pile of baskets – I mean the organized shelf where the baskets are arranged by size… Uh-huh.

Perfect basket!

Then, I made a trip to Home Depot and bought a couple of sedum plants and some scotch moss.

The next part was the easiest… I literally went into the backyard and picked up twigs. We have fir trees all over the place here in the Northwest so I walked about 10 feet out of the house and went to a small branch that had fallen in a recent windstorm. Perfect little twigs all over it! I also grabbed a few pine cones. Next, I broke all the twigs to about the same size and tied them together with some twine that I had. Here’s my collection of goods for the kit so far. 

Plants and Twigs

Anne has spent many hours in our backyard with my son collecting little white rocks that had been excavated when we redid our backyard. She really liked them and so I scooped up a pile they had left on the patio, washed them, and put them in a terracotta pot.

When I arranged everything in the basket, it felt like it needed more so I whipped out the trusty glue gun and grabbed some more twigs. Some of them were curved; some were flat. I thought making a little door wood be cute so I arranged some curved twigs to fit just right, breaking them off where needed.

Making a door.

Sometimes, I used a kitchen knife to whack at them too… please be careful if you use this method!

Fitting together curved twigs.

Some parts of the branch I used had some moss on it that was perfect for my project. I used the moss to cover up any globs of glue that I found.

Moss covers up all the messiness.

Now that I was on a gluing rampage, there was no stopping me. I went ahead and made a pathway too.

Just cut all the leftover straight twigs to the same size and glued.

The whole kit came together in about three hours and that includes the time I spent at Home Depot and the time gathering supplies in my basement, garage, and backyard. Super easy and it turned out great. The best part is that the Fairy Garden Kit was a hit with Anne and her friends!

Just needed to add a bow.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully, I will get back here again soon!

Karey