Fairy House, Part III: Tree

One problem with the glass walls of the fairy house is that they really don’t provide much purchase for mounting things like curtains, shelves, or other things. Not only that, but anything you do use to mount stuff will show through the glass from the outside, which is never pretty. To combat this (and to fill in some of the bareness of the walls), I decided to add a tree to the inside. The branches “grow” along the walls and provide both cover and a place to hang things from, and the leaves make the whole thing look cozier and less stark.

Fairy House, Part II: Stone Floor

The first thing I did to try to make the glass-and-metal house look more natural was to add a stone floor. Not a real stone floor, of course (though I did briefly consider trying to find some pebbles and mortar), but an amazingly realistic faux-stone floor made of a material I never would have thought of on my own… egg cartons.

Cardboard egg cartons are really perfect for this application– they’re smooth on the front, but the back side has a great texture to mimic stone, and they’re already this grayish-brownish color that works really well, particularly once coated in glue. Apparently miniature artists use egg cartons (and those cardboard coffee-cup holders that hold multiple cups at once, they have an even more textured surface) all the time to make faux stone surfaces, and I can see why!