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Susan Flamm

Fairy House Gardner’s Cottage



As I create more fairy houses, I have decided to continue my focus on using recycled & found materials. The structure for this house was built from cardboard, a glass honey jar, a pill bottle and a liquor bottle. I’m not much of a drinker but I love the colors, shapes and designs of liquor bottles. In this house, I used a Handy & Schiller bottle. It has a beautiful metal label & metal band on the bottle that I chose to leave visible to accent the stone chimney. I glued a pill bottle on top of the liquor bottle to extend the chimney above the roof line with the pill bottle lid giving a nice flare to the top of the chimney.



The pinecones & rocks I collected on my walks around my neighborhood. If you check the cracks at the edges of roads and sidewalks, there are a lot of loose pebbles that are just going to be washed down the sewer drain next time it rains.


The paper clay, adhesives and paint were purchased but all of the flowers, moss and wood for the flower boxes were left over from other projects. The carrots, in the garden, came from supplies I purchased for a wreath but one of them cracked in half. So, I decided they would make great carrot tops sticking out of the ground in the garden.


The wheelbarrow I made from a metal hanger, a button and a hickory shell I found on another of my walks. The glass in the windows was leftover from other projects or from old picture frames. The shovel I purchased at Hobby Lobby and the bench came from Pipkin’s Market. The Garden Center at Pipkin’s Market was a large selection of Fairy furniture and accessories.



I decided I wanted to try something new for my ground cover. The first thing I tried was dying coffee grounds that I got from Starbucks. Unfortunately, with them being so dark to begin with, I just couldn’t get the color variation I was looking for. The second trial was sawdust. I asked one of the employees in the wood cutting area at Lowe’s if I could have some of the sawdust he had swept up and was going to throw away. He was more than happy to oblige. The sawdust worked so much better. I was able to dye two shades of brown and three shades of green for the grass around the house and the soil in the garden.

One of my favorite tools in my workspace is my desktop vacuum cleaner (see link below). It stays plugged into a USB port and is ready to clean up just about anything!


There are lights in the fairy house that can be turned on in the back of the house. One thing to definitely watch for is the glowing pebbles when the lights are on in the fairy house at night.


Tools & Materials:

Air Dry Modelling Clay - https://tinyurl.com/yyj63bt6

White LED Lights - https://tinyurl.com/2s48dr3y

Handy and Schiller Old Fashioned - https://tinyurl.com/ywmz2d2k

Desktop Vacuum Cleaner - https://tinyurl.com/6npyd3u6

Hot glue gun

Masking Tape

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