Activities & Days Out / 1 December, 2019 / Nanny Anita

How to Make a House Fit for a Fairy!

I recently saw this craft on Pinterest, although the original was made into a bird feeder. With a fairy themed spin on the idea. I immediately knew that both my charges would love to make them. They both have fairy doors in their bedroom’s and their little fairies (Cherry-Rabbit and Hunter-Fox) leave them little fairy gifts that they find. This was the inspiration behind this craft, I mean, why not make really cute fairy houses and hang them up in the woods to create our own pixie hollow!?

You will need:

• Empty bottles – the 2 litre ones make great ones but using 500ml ones are just as good
• Scissors
• Twine
• Single hole punch – optional
• Acrylic paint*
• Paintbrushes
• Split pins

* it is really important to use acrylic paint, as normal poster paints will just chip off the bottle.

How to:

The first few steps need to be done by an adult as they are quite difficult and require the use of sharp scissors or a knife.

Cut the bottle in half; for the bottom half cut up about ¼ way up from the bottom and for the top cut about ¼ way down from the lid.

In the bottom half cut a doorway.

At either side of the bottom half make a small hole, then put the top half on and make a hole in either side so that they line up with the bottom ones.

Take the twine and make a big knot in one end. Thread the twine through one of the holes in the bottom half, the knot should be on the inside. Push the twine through the corresponding hole in the top half (as if you were making a stitch).  Then do the same in reverse on the other side and tie it off with a big knot. You should be left with all the twine on the inside of the house. Pull it all up through the neck of the bottle.

Using a sharp pair of scissors make a hole in the lid and pull the twine through the hole. You should be able to slide the lid down and screw it into place on the bottle. If your bottle halves keep coming apart, push some split pins in through the top and bottom half to secure them.

Now that the hard part is done you can decorate your houses. As I said earlier you really need to use acrylic paint for this. We don’t have much of ours left, apart from the white paint, I gave each house a base coat of white acrylic so that we could paint over the top in our poster paints, which worked out really nicely.

Both EC and YC loved making their fairy houses and were over the moon when they thought about what sort of fairy or creature would live in their houses. EC was convinced that he would end up with a bat living in his one, although he did say he didn’t mind if a snail lived in there instead!

A little lady bird came to check out the house