First, we searched online for images of other peoples' creations, to further spark our imaginations and to help us work out what sort of features we wanted to have in ours. There are so many beautiful ones out there - don't go looking unless you want to be inspired!
Then, we chose a pot. It just so happened that we had a lovely big ceramic pot that was not being used for anything in particular. We filled it with potting mix & dirt from the garden, giving us a fantastic blank slate to work with, and a good idea of how much surface area we actually had to work with.
We went scavenging for rocks and pebbles, so that we'd have a good collection to choose from when the time came for construction. It was quite amazing how many lovely ones we were able to find very close to home.
Next up was a trip to a local craft shop. We had decided that we wanted to build a house ourselves, as well as some toadstools. So we bought a pack of air-drying clay. This was where it started to get fun. We wanted a fairly natural looking house, so we settled on a round house shape with a mushroomy sort of shaped roof. S is all about spotting houses with chimneys, so of course there was a chimney. Windows and a door seemed necessary too.
The walls & roof were built separately. The house is upside down, because I had the brilliant idea of embedding nails into the clay at the bottom of the walls, so that they could be stuck into the ground for extra stability. We cut a door shape out of the wall, and re-attached it so that it was open.
The other items you can see are the stalks and tops of toadstools. I made them separately so that the nails embedded in the bottoms of the stalks could be pointing upwards to dry - next time, I would make them all of one piece and use some dry oasis to stick them in while they dried. The toadstool tops are there on the tray as well.
We wanted a bridge in our garden. At first, I had thought of constructing it out of rocks & paddlepop sticks, but I had a chunk of clay left over, so decided to build it out of clay with pebbles pressed into it.
This wasn't actually a very brilliant idea, as once the clay was dry, the pebbles began to fall off, and I had to glue them back in place. Still, it looks kind of cute :) There's a cut toilet roll under the paper, to help it stay in shape.
We then had to wait a day or two while this stuff all dried, so one relatively warm winter's day, we raided our front and back gardens for plants. We have this gorgeous garden that was almost completely bare when we moved in 18 months ago (we are renting) but that gradually came to life. Right now, coming into spring again, it is full of delightful bulbs that just appear from nowhere - daffodils, jonquils, snowdrops, and soon there'll be grape hyacinths, spring stars, and a whole bunch of others that I don't even know the names of. I love it! Anyway, our expedition resulted in purple violets, white violets, seaside daisies, two different succulents, and a lovely little silvery-green leafy groundcovering plant that grows tiny white flowers. These were promptly installed in their new home.
We also dug up small patches of moss from around the yard, for "grass."
The space left in the middle was going to be for the path, pond, bridge, and house. We had intended to place the house in the space right at the top of the above picture, but as you will see, it didn't quite work out like that.
From our rock collection, we decided to use some white rocks for the path. Some were a bit big, but we smashed them up with a hammer to get nice small pieces. The gap in the middle is for the pond. There was also a large flat piece of reddish-orange rock which was going to be the doorstep, but it also didn't work out that way. I am saving it for another project instead!
Another thing we were busy constructing was a picket fence. I cut a bunch of paddlepop sticks roughly in half, and used some thin wire to join them all together in a line. I then glued around the wiring to hold it all in place, and then we painted them white. There are two sections of fence in the below picture, but we only ended up using one. It's lovely and wonky, has a very rustic sort of feel.
To make the pond, we hollowed out the patch of dirt between the two path sections, and in it we placed a piece of blue cellophane from our craft drawer, and a handful of blue glass pebbles - the kind you can buy from craft shops or the garden section of Bunnings (we already had some).
We made an edging for the path & pond from some flat grey pebbles from our rock collection. Apart from looking nice, they also hid the edges of the cellophane! We were aware that some of this was only temporary, as things were going to need to shift about a bit to fit in the bridge when it was ready.
A day or two later, the clay bits and pieces were dry. Another trip to the craft shop was in order - this time for some paints and some varnish to waterproof everything!
My preference would have been for softer, more muted colours for the house, but S was insistent on bright colours, and it certainly does stand out! It's still upside down at this stage.
We glued all the relevant bits together after painting, though, and it was only at this stage that I thought of the blocks of dry oasis that I had stashed in a cupboard from a previous project! I cut out a couple of small bits of fabric & glued them inside the windows for curtains. You can also see below how the toadstools were looking by this stage. I love them, they're so cute!
Then it was on with a couple of coats of varnish, making sure to get into all the little crevices where water might find its way in to destroy our creations.
Then came the reeeaaalllly exciting bit! Installing it all in the pot! We hit a snag here, though. Due to the nails in the bottom of the house (which otherwise worked brilliantly), the doorstep did not fit. Also, the door of the house opened directly onto the bridge. So we had to move things around a bit. The house went to the other side, and we built up a little hill of dirt to put it on. The path then curved around and up the "hill" to the front door, from the bridge. We needed to move some moss, and gather some extra bits, to fill in the gaps.
We thought it was finished, but then I decided to add one last finishing touch...a garden arch. I made this out of wire. It's quite rustic also.
Voila! It was a couple of weeks in the making, but it is so cute, and S loves playing in it! We've now moved it to a shadier spot, especially for the sake of the moss. The moss is going to take a while to settle in - at the moment it is still just chunks of mossy dirt cut out of the ground and plonked in place. But it will eventually grow and spread and fill in more of the gaps.
And now, we're already beginning work on the next one. They're addictive, I tell you! I'll blog about it progressively :) Hope you're feeling inspired; it's such a lovely project to work on with a child, but I reckon I'd do it even if it was just me!
The most fun bit was when one day, I slipped outside while S was distracted, and sprinkled some silver glitter around. When she discovered it, her reaction was just priceless - "Mamma! Daddy! Come look! There's MAGIC!"
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