The wonderful world of fairies...

I was excited that my daughter Kaela was getting interested in fairies. I bought her the Cicely Mary Barker books and we had a great time exploring all of the nooks and crannies of those drawings and poems. But Kaela has always been drawn to figures and so I was in the market for some inexpensive, non-Disney fairy figurines.

I searched on Amazon and eBay, Etsy and even the local Farmer's Market. The nicer the fairy the more it cost, of course! Then I found these on the Magic Cabin website. They were wooden, they had pose-able arms and legs, but they didn't cost an arm and a leg. When they arrived, although I liked them, I suddenly realized that we could make our own.

So we began by collecting seeds, feathers, and bark from the park. Then we went to Michael's and bought some pipe cleaners, silk flowers, sheets of felt, glue, and wooden ball dowels. The total came to $10. I have lots of yarn because I'm a knitter so we were all set for hair. The interesting thing is how different each one became.

First we took two pipe cleaners (or chenille stems as they are now called). We created the arms & spike for the head from one and then the torso and the legs from the other. We twisted them together to secure them. Then we "dressed" them in the flowers and bits of felt. The flowers became the skirts and the felt we made into tunics. I glued feathers all
over one of the fairies for a neat flapper effect.


We added beads to the ends of the arms and legs for hands and feet. We glued on the heads and cut yarn for the hair. Then we took our feathers or leaves from the flowers and made the wings.

Most importantly, Kaela and I had a blast creating the fairies. They were quick to make, fun to decorate, and Kaela is having a blast playing with them!