Some of us plant obsessed people may not get it. BUT, there’s a ton of reasons this little project can come in handy!

Maybe you know that perfect someone to give an enchanting gift, but they don’t have such a green thumb. Maybe you need light-weight, mess-free centerpieces that last. Maybe you just don’t have room in your windowsill for a single plant.

I’m in love with fairy gardens.

So, fairy gardens, even without plants are still so charming and magical. I’ll show you how to make a fairy garden that requires absolutely no care…

Here’s the simple concept. I don’t know why i must sketch everything first.

How to Make A Fairy Garden Without Plants

Project Time: 12 minutes

#1 Gather Supplies

For this fairy garden you will need:

• A Bonsai Dish
• Floral foam
• Decorative moss. There’s some really cute stuff out there.
• and a Fairy Garden Kit or Oven Bake Sculpey Clay to make your own.

#2 Find a Container

This bonsai dish has been just waiting for me to think of something to do with it.

#3 Cut and Size the Foam

Fill the dish with foam. Here’s a piece of floral foam that I bought at the dollar store. It didn’t cover the dish so I cut pieces to size. If you plan to add plants later, you CAN use potting soil. If you do, remember to water it every couple of weeks because soil drys airy, after a while it won’t hold the wire supports.

#4 Flatten and Place Decorative Moss

Cover the foam with decorative moss. I grabbed this bag from Menards for 3 bucks. I really wish it were GREEN, like the bag says. Never fear, Dollar Tree has green moss. It looks pretty real too. If you need to glue the moss down to keep it put, use styrofoam instead of floral foam. Hot glue won’t stick to floral foam.

You can alternatively wet the moss before you place it, so that it shapes nicely to the foam.

Some other ideas for the ‘green carpet’ could be a fuzzy blanket. A green crochet winter scarf. Shredded coconut dyed with green food coloring. Fake grass from a hobby shop (by the train modeling section).

#5 Add Fairy Magic

Final step, this is the fun part. Add your fairy garden magic! Arrange your pieces however you’d like to create your magical fairy world. I made this out of oven bake Sculpy Clay.

Final Product

There you go! Now you know how to make a fairy garden without plants. If you know someone that would love to know how to make a fairy garden with no plants, share this post!  If you have made fairy gardens, Id love to see photos of your work! Add them to the comments below!

The post How to Make a Fairy Garden… Without Plants? appeared first on Roots Nursery.

My Fairy Houses

If you’ve been following, you’ve probably realized I am fanatically obsessed with fairy gardens. I’ve built so many fairy houses, I have them coming out the wazoo! If you love crafts, it’s pretty easy to build your own DIY fairy houses. They’re such a fantastic, and EASY addition to a fairy garden. Little landscapes where tiny people live. Even entire fairy, gnome, and sprite villages. I mean, come on. How cute is that?

Clay Fairy Houses

Clay fairy houses are easily my favorite because they’re so tiny and quick. The quicker the project, the better! I’m all about instant gratification. Oven bake clay is easy to work with, especially if you have a toaster oven! You can get super creative with shapes, and they only take a few minutes each once you get the hang of it.

Shape your clay in the form of a tiny house. Insert a support wire in the bottom. Bake. And paint. Its that easy, but I’ve described the process below.

I used the original Sculpey oven bake clay. I created my little masterpieces, then carefully drove a piece of 16 gauge wire (from the hardware store) into the bottom so they would stick in the soil. I pushed the wire as far as it would go without ruining the piece. The instructions for baking is 275 for 10 to 15 minutes. It’s a very quick process in a toaster oven because you don’t have to preheat. You can cover your toaster oven pan with tinfoil if you don’t want to be eating clay later.

Some tips. Be careful to smooth your work before baking. Fingerprints in the clay look pretty bad in finished pieces. Try different tools for making different style doors and windows. Pencils, exacto knives, curled wire. I looked on pinterest for never-ending ideas.

After the pieces are baked, you can go nuts with acrylic paint.  My favorite method was to water down brown acrylic paint to a watercolor consistency. Wash it on very messily with a paintbrush. Then blot sections of it off with a paper towel. It creates an awesome aged look.  

After the brown paint drys, Go over it with a wash of white paint, and blot again. Paint your windows and doors different colors. Glue on some moss, raffia, bark, whatever you have!  Then start building your little fairy world. Signs and stepping stones with cute little sayings are just as fun.

In the photos below, I carved a word into the clay with a pencil before baking. After baking, I retraced the word with a fine point Sharpie permanent marker.

I was thrilled with my fairy house results. The more I worked on them, the better they got. Since they only took a few minutes to shape, it went fast.

Clay fairy houses are so easy and quick, with just the right amount of creative touch. I know you can make these yourself. They are also quite inexpensive to make. All you need is clay, some wire and whatever tools you have laying around.

Concrete Fairy Houses

I go through project after project here at the nursery. The creative force is STRONG! I had already been making concrete pots, so I had some experience and lots of concrete. When the fairy obsession hit, there was no way around trying a few concrete fairy houses. Foam won first prize for making forms. It was more crafty than constructive, so that was a major plus. (hint, pull out your hot glue gun)

First I cut 3″ wide strips of foam. I eyeballed the length. I bought high density black foam at least 6mm thick.   If you’re building larger houses, you might also glue your strips double thick to get the rigidity you need to keep the walls straight. Foam is important because it holds concrete nicely, and it bends without tearing so you can get your house OUT of the form after it sets.

You’ll be thrilled at how easy creating a concrete form turns out to be. I found an old board as a base. I grabbed my 3″ foam strips and hot glued them, on their side, to the shape and size that I wanted my house to be. It was SO easy. You’ll have dozens of them before you know it.

For door and windows, I cut the foam into squares and glued them to the board, inside the form. I wanted deeper windows and doors, so I stacked and glued two pieces together to get the thickness I wanted. I poured a thin layer of pea gravel into the bottom of my form for a stone wall. Then, I mixed and poured the concrete into my form. Let it set up completely before taking it out. The concrete will usually pull the door and window foam out with it. Simply peel them out and stick them back in the form.

Since my foam form (say that 3 times fast, foam form, foam form, foam form) is buried somewhere in the garage, I drew a diagram of what it looks like. You can build any shape or style with foam. Because it’s flexible you can let your creativity go wild! Create round hobbit houses. Design whimsically angled walls, doors and windows.

When they’re done you can finish them off with more crafty ideas… paint them, glue on gorgeous moss, add fake flowers, glue on wooden roofs or doors. So many possibilities.

Wooden Fairy Houses

Wooden fairy houses are so strikingly beautiful, but the most time consuming. It’s definitely a construction project. For my outdoor fairy garden above, I wanted something large to fill that space nicely. I had a bunch of salvaged wooden shelves from an old shoe store. They were aged from being outside which was great, but I still did a lot to the finish.

I designed and marked the boards for the cuts. I needed 2 sides with angles for a roof. One front. One back. Then, roof shingles. It was really easy to eyeball the measurements. Angles aren’t super important. I just made sure each opposite side matched. This is easy as cutting one board, tracing precisely and cutting a matching board.

To get a nicer aged look, I painted all of the boards black (except for the roof). After the black paint dried, I sloppily painted over with white. I wanted some of the black show through. The side boards were left black.

When all the paint dried, construction began.  The sides were screwed onto the front and the back. I inserted the front and back boards (white), between the sides, so that nice black side edge shows from the front. Then the shingles were secured on top with a nail gun.

The windows and doors were the most meticulous part. I cut tiny pieces of the same board with a small hand saw. Then painted them black, let them dry, and sanded the edges to age them.

I glued them on the front of the house with Gorilla Wood glue. It’s important to use this glue and not cheap out if you want this baby to weather the outdoors. UPDATE (2018): I’ve tried a lot of glues and I have to say, I’m so impressed with this glue. We’re going on our third year and it’s held up beautifully. I’ve left it outside, right where it is for 2 winters!

After I glued the windows, I painted inside of the windows black. The little cross sections in the windows that replicate window panes are popsicle sticks of all things!  I’m also impressed with how the Gorilla wood glue held these thin little thing in place for all this time.

To top it off with a roof, I scraped some paint off the shingles, and had Jon nailgun it all together. It turned out to be a half day project but it was really fun, and totally worth the effort. For years, our fairy house has been outside and holding together nicely.

The sky’s the limit and you’re only bound by your creativity. I hope you try some of these fairy garden houses and share photos of your work in the comment section below! Have fun!!!

The post How to Make Fairy Houses. Clay Concrete & wood (with Photos) appeared first on Roots Nursery.

• Align 6 or 7 popsicle sticks vertically.
• Measure and cut two popsicle sticks the horizontal width of the door.
• Glue both popsicle sticks across horizontally to hold it all together.
• Paint or stain the door.
• Add embellishments like moss, jewelry, or a tiny thumbtack doorknob.
• Display your door in the fairy garden or nail to a tree.

I was so impressed with how great popsicle stick fairy doors look, I had to try it myself. I quickly found myself making more and more!

Step 0. Gather your crafty stuff from around the house… Look through your craft bins, sewing tins, junk drawers, etc. Look for popsicle sticks, buttons, thumbtacks, jewelry, beads, glitter… A ‘fairy door shoebox’ filled with tools and goodies, will quickly become something you never knew you needed in your life.

Picking the Right Glue

Whilst crafting, it’s normal to grab the hot glue gun and go. But the glue I chose for my fairy doors was important because they needed to be durable enough to hold up to the elements outside. So, I started with Gorilla Wood glue, with hopes that it would hold daily watering of my fairy garden containers. Plus rainwater, harsh wind, and scorching sun so prevalent here in my backyard/nursery.

Gorilla Wood Glue is rated for indoor/outdoor use with Type2 water resistance, but what I like about this glue is that it sets quickly and there’s no foam like with regular gorilla glue.

UPDATE: Gorilla wood glue is the perfect glue for wood projects to be kept outdoors. I left the doors out all winter to be sure they would survive the elements. And they DID! But just because they can doesn’t mean you should. They got super dirty, So I would bring them in the garage over winters to come. In the end, Gorilla wood glue passed my outdoor elements test and I’m very happy with this choice. I bought this bottle on Amazon.

How to Make a Fairy Door: Construction

Making a fairy door is a rather straightforward process. Lay popsicle sticks out to create the design you want. Cut two cross pieces to hold it all together and glue. I used a box cutter to cut the pieces. You probably can get away with a good pair of scissors.

Next, pick out cool buttons, charms from old jewelry, beads, fake moss from the dollar store, and glue them on in a pleasing way. Be as creative as you like. The options are limitless.

Here, I used wood stain on some, acrylic paint on others, and left some bare wood.

The first two came out pretty cute, especially for how quick and easy they were to make. To get the buttons to lay flat, I cut a small hole in the door with an Exacto knife and glued the button in.

Then, add some color! I have a thing for red doors. After posting this picture on Facebook, I learned some fascinating things about red doors.

“Feng shui says that they are good luck.” “In China, it’s a tradition to paint the front door red before the new year, to invite good luck and happiness.” “In Catholicism, the red door on a chapel symbolized the blood of Christ to signify that the ground inside the church was holy, and a sanctuary from physical and spiritual evils.” “In Ireland, front doors are painted red to ward-off ghosts and evil spirits.”  

I had no idea! But I do know that red fairy doors are awesome!

Like I said, making these fairy doors was so quick and easy, I just kept going, loving every minute of it. Honestly, you can make 4 or 5 in a little over an hour. It’s fun to see projects come to fruition in so little time, and turn out super cute even for a beginner!

At this point, I had a question. How do you get these things to stand up?

You could EASILY glue a stick, piece of wire, or another popsicle stick to the back, protruding out the bottom so that you can just stick it in the dirt. And that would have been just fine. But I was on a roll and wanted to go the extra mile.

Most fairy doors I’d seen were attached to a tree, but I wanted to put them in containers. So I did some searching and I found the most impressive fairy garden doors Ive ever seen. It’s elaborate and breathtaking with a ton of little details to look at.

I was inspired to say the least!

Since I had my hole-boring drill bit kit out to build our hoop house cold frame (and I didn’t have to go outside in 20-degree weather to get it) I had the idea to attach the doors to branches. Which I also had a box of inside. Don’t ask.

So I glued the doors to branches that were trimmed to the right height. Then, I found a drill bit about the width of the branch and drilled holes in a base of scrap wood. Filled the holes with glue. Stuck in some broken branches…and voila! This is what I came up with.

The post How To Make Fairy Doors. A 15 Minute Craft (with Pictures) appeared first on Roots Nursery.

This broken pot fairy garden was one of the first of a slew of jaw dropping fairy gardens. The hens and chicks (sempervivum) bursting at the seems is what really gets me in this arrangement. Densely compact succulents keep it looking clean. It’s neat and tidy and messy all at once!  The fairy door, bird bath and little birdhouse on top is like the icing on a chocolate cake!

Source: hometalk.com via Kathy on Pinterest

I had to try this myself.

When the plants grew in, it looked fabulous, but I want to show you the bare bones. It’s relatively easy to fit the pieces together into a nice arrangement.  Some tips to make it work. Wet your soil so it packs firmly. And you do have to pack very firmly to get the whole thing to stay together. It will take some adjusting. The rock at the bottom was not only decorative but helped to support the entire garden. The steps were the hardest to get to stay in place. Keep working with it until you get your desired result, because this will be a beautiful garden for a long time. It does hold together if done right.

Here the plants are starting to grow in…

Broken Pot Fairy Garden

Here are some of my favorite broken pot fairy gardens from pinterest to get your juices flowing. There are so many creative people out there! (Click the image to see the original pin.)

The post Broken pots turned into a fairy paradise! appeared first on Roots Nursery.

These fairy houses were hand crafted by my 17 year old son in his ceramics class. You can imagine my delight when my son called during the school day ‘hey ma, im in ceramics class, what do you want’. The urge to rattle off a huge list was a struggle, but i managed to keep it at a fairy house and some mushrooms. I asked him not to glaze them, so I can eventually grow some chia seeds on them. This by far was the best mothers day gift ever. Made with love by my son 😀

Do YOU have any home made fairy garden items? Would love to see them. Post Below!

The post Clay Fairy Houses – made by my son! appeared first on Roots Nursery.

I’m OBSESSED with Fairy Gardens. Fairy doors, fairy houses, little mushrooms, garden Gnomes… obsessed.  I really have gone fairy garden crazy.

And rightly so.

After rigorous hours in the nursery moving massive amounts of soil, hauling pots, building cinderblock structures, its such a relief to sit and create something… small.

ahhhhh. my back thanks me.

Here are nine wonderfully creative fairy doors that I found on pinterest, made with things you might find around your home. I was so inspired I scavenged my home for bits and baubles and made my own. Hopefully, it will inspire you too. Here are my instructions on how to make fairy doors.

Fairy Doors

Can You Believe this Fairy Door is made out of Popsicle Sticks???
these are SO easy to make. Popsicle sticks. Glue. Paint and doo dads.
I wrote a post with instructions here.
craftster.org

Birch Log Fairy Door

At first I thought, that would be hard to hollow out a little birch log. But looking closer, duh. Just paint it! This would be easy to scrape off some bark… or don’t! Just trace an area and hit it with black paint. Then go nuts with the decorations.
fineartmarketplace.com

Fairy Door Made of an old hollow log:

I think this one looks easy to me because we had some big trees come down. Someone came out and sliced up all of them and left them for us to use for firewood. There are many interesting logs with cracks and crevices that look like doors. It would be simple to pull one out, grab your hot glue and find some twigs to make little fancies… If your yard is clean, look for a neighbor with trees that have been taken down. Ask the if you can steal some pieces.
craftster.org</a

Fairy Doors made out of bark and rocks

This one is SUPER easy recycling fun. Find an old water bottle, yogurt cup, butter tub. Flip it. cut out a door. Glue on rocks and bark… done and done. The faster the work comes together, the easier it is to add those creative touches. LOVE it.
magicalchildhood.wordpress.com

Fairy House with a Fairy Door Made from a pumpkin

ok, this one will take some time. But right after halloween, you might be in luck. Id say, to save time in carving and to make your fairy house last longer, paint the doors and windows with black paint. Then glue on the knick knacks and fun stuff. Find twigs and flower buds around the yard and go to town. The moral of this post. Hot Glue is a crafters best friend.
lifestyle.msn.com

Fairy Treehouse Ladder Door

This looks super easy but might take a few minutes with a tiny little drill bit. This ladder is so so cute and i can see two ways to do it. Cut twigs. Find a tiny drill bit and drill holes to feed the string through. Make sure a knot before and after each rung. OR if you dont have a drill or don’t actually feel like drilling, just tie a knot around each rung. If it’s a little off, it will only add to the adorableness of this thing. It’s pretty easy to tie it up…

Shared by Patricia

Simple fairy entryway with twigs and pinecones

This is as easy as sticking sticks in a hole. Literally. If you have a tree with an opening, just place sticks, pinecones, rocks and more around it. You could always glue it in place if you don’t want it to blow or wash away with the next rain.
flickr.com

Fairy Ladder and door with twigs and hot glue

I mean how cute. Get your hot glue gun. Glue some twigs together to make the door and the platform. Then glue twigs onto larger branches, or anything you have laying around to make the ladder. Then glue on your little fancy things like flowers, jewelry, decorative moss, anything from your craft box.
faenation.com

Popsicle stick fairy door with branches and old jewelry

Again, this is a super fast and easy project. Your kids will love it. All you need is some popsicle sticks, the right kind of glue for outdoors, and whatever fun stuff laying around the house or yard to decorate it. Instructions are here.
kaboodle.com

Fairy Garden Doors you can Buy

Oh, some more awesome things. I told you I was obsessed. Someone asked me where to buy fairy doors in the comments. I usually go to my nursery, but once I started looking on Amazon, it was hard to stop, they have so many wonderful things and they’re actually even cheaper!

I found this glow in the dark fairy door and window set. These are adorable. I may have to buy a bunch of these for my whole yard.

Here’s a beautiful fairy door already done for you. Mushrooms and all.

A gorgeous hobbit door. I’m a sucker for these. It would be easy to build a mound of soil and grow moss on top of in a nice shady place. Then carve out a space the door on the side of the mound and place it in…. how stinkin cute!

And if you like RED, which is what inspired me to do this post in the first place… a round red gnome door.

And even more. oh my gosh, dont get me started on amazon. The selection is endless.


I hope you have fun with your fairy gardening! There are so many options it’s almost hard to get started. Don’t wait to choose, just grab something get started! Fairy doors are such a fun little project. Hopefully I’ve given you some good ideas 😀

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