Thursday, January 17, 2013

A fairy house

I have become recently obsessed with fairy gardens. I am in love with them. I've always been a fan of fairies, but I see this as a magic door opening to my childhood. Memories of imaginary friends and places fill my mind when I look at the tiny little homes and furniture. I always wanted a big fancy doll house when I was young, to fill and decorate as I pleased. Express my creativity and individuality as best as I could as a adolescent. The feeling of overflowing creativity has somewhat diminished with every birthday. I look at my scrapbook with writers block, wanting to do something but unable to imagine anything 'decent'. My imagination seems to be escaping me, possibly to the mind of this little sprouting child I share my life with. Hmmm.....
When I look at fairy gardens I feel a rush of the creativity I once knew flood my veins, and it gets me excited.
We went and gathered wood from the national forests for firewood on Christmas Eve. As we were unloading it back at home I found an old tree stump that I fell in love with. It had so much character I could not chop it, so it sat there for close to two weeks. The hubby, of course, thought I was crazy. ' what are you going to do with this old chunk of wood'? Something.




Isn't it beautiful? How could I burn it?
A ha! A fairy house! I don't know how or why it came to me, I don't even remember how I came up with the design. But I grabbed all the tools I thought would be handy and started chipping away at the wood. Shortly afterword I also started to think I was indeed crazy. One wrong chisel and the whole thing could be ruined. Ooh the pressure! It took me two nights to finish the door alone.








I chiseled out the door and sanded it down as best I could. Then I used a ruler to mark the lines for each plank of wood in the door. I took the chisel and tapped it into the straight lines to give me a good starting groove, then took the dremmel and drilled out the lines.




I really wanted them straight but natural looking. I then used the wood burner on the plank lines to give it a more dimensional look.




The last step was to stain it and add the doorknob! (I used an upholstery tack, perfect!)





I did the windows next, which I had a big beautiful vision in my head as to how I wanted it to look. Naturally, when I have a vision I am filled with disappointment when it turns out nothing like it. I had no vision for the door and just 'winged' it, and it was more beautiful than I could have imagined. But the windows, sigh. I chiseled and thought about painting the inside, curtains? A room silhouette? Black? None of that looked good. I ended up just staining one a light color and adding skewers at a window trim, and the other one I turned into a door, the wonky window look was not working out as I had envisioned and looked more like a barn door.



Ah well. Everything can't be a masterpiece. I do think the garden swing made up for the funky windows though.



My first fairy home.
I am pleased as punch and can't wait to do another one. I just need to find some time to go stump hunting. Lol
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad