Fancy Fairy Houses on a squeaky tight budget...

Today we were a homeschooling cliche. We ditched school work to make fairy houses.

We saw these beautiful fairy houses in the Magic Cabin catalog.

Fairy Forest Home

We've been drooling over these for about four years, but the $100 price tag just seemed too much for a few wood planks, sticks and scraps of silk. I knew that there had to be a way to make these at home. Santa finally sprung for the fairy dolls so I knew the time had come to get creative and thrifty!

We started by collecting some sturdy sticks. Then we went to A.C. Moore to get some wood planks. This was the bulk of the expense. Each large plank was $17.99, but I had a 40% off coupon for one of them. The planks with bark were each $14.99 and I had a 40% off coupon for one of those as well.

At our local craft store I found some small birds, nests and baby mice. All together it cost under $6.

Finally we headed out to Joanne Fabrics and made a beeline straight for the 50% off cart. There we found some silks that were marked down to $3 a yard with the additional 50% off. We found four perfect fabrics and bought a yard of each. In the floral section we found some moss for $3.99 that we just knew would come in handy.

Once we got home I took out my tools- a glue gun, some scissors and some wire. That's when the fun started!



I love my glue gun. Is there nothing it cannot do? I used a lot of glue because I wanted the sticks to be sturdy. I used the tree blocks that our friend TJIC cut for us last month for supports.



Then I wired a stick across the platform and reinforced it with lots of glue. Finally I added the second platform to the stick by wedging a smaller stick underneath it as a support beam and added, you guessed it, lots of glue.



They went up much faster than I expected, which meant that we got to start the fun part right away- decorating!



The details were delightful.







This is Petal Summerbee, Lily's doll resting in her hammock in her new fairy house.



This is Rebecca's doll Crystal Tinselfrost.



She's a winter fairy. Notice the snow on the moss?





Rebecca decided that Crystal's hammock should be upstairs.



These were so fun to work on. It kept us busy all afternoon.







Total: $67 for two completely original one of a kind hand made fairy houses!

planks: $51
sticks: free
wood blocks: free
fabric: $6
accessories: $6
moss: $4

Ribbons, flowers and glue sticks were things we had with our craft supplies so I didn't count those.

It killed me to spend $51 dollars on the planks, but I just could not think of a way around it. Luckily I had a credit which I used for about half of the cost. TJIC had offered to cut us some slabs from a log, but I couldn't find any logs that were both big enough in circumference and light enough to drag home.

I think that the girls will enjoy these houses for a long time and I know that the memory of building them together will last a lifetime.