Fairy garden sign!

First of all I asked Chris to cut me out a sign from some old wood we had, he sanded it down too so it was smooth.

Then I found a font I liked and printed it checking the size on the bit of wood.

My first brain wave re. tracing the letters was to make a print by damping the back of the paper so the ink would transfer to the wood. I reversed the lettering on the computer and placed it face down on the wood.

It worked really well, painting over it would have been easy, except for 2 things I hadn't thought through! 1) when it was painted it wouldn't transfer the ink anymore as not porous and 2) the lettering paint I used was quite thin so it needed a few coats, over the black ink might have been even worse.

Here you can see the painted version, not sure if I preferred it before au natural but at least it should be more weatherproof as it was a wood stain I used on the garden shed. I had to cut out the letters, bit fiddly. I didn't do them individually as wanted to keep them in a straight line when drawing around them so just did the tops and bottoms of the letters!  

After I was able to fill in some of the missing lines free hand as they were easy but I cut out some of fancier letters individually to finish off my outline.

Here's finished outline before paint. 

I used a gold leaf paint and small paint brush! Couple of coats!

I then decided to outline the letters as they didn't stand out well.  Not finished yet of course! Still need the upright stick to put it in the ground.

Gwen loves the fairy garden already.

Gwen knows about the fairies - yay! and she toddles her way over and points to them when I say 'where are the fairies?' I now have even more plans for it, more fairy houses, a small rockery garden, and a sign!

Progress at last!

After a pretty miserable winter we have finally made progress on the fairy Garden, our excuse is that Gwen is still a bit young to appreciate it! However her cousins have had a bit of fun in there even when there wasn't much going on so it's more for them at the moment!

They played for ages with just a few bits and pieces, making things for the fairies out of twine and twigs.

Here they are making bridges and washing lines, ladders out of wood and twine. 

A fairy washing line!

I asked Chris to make a fairy door, so he managed to find all sorts of bits and pieces around the place. he used some of the top layer of some old furniture to be the z shaped bits,  and used a screw for a door knob. and a bit of wood stain!!

the finished door

It was too big to sit in the side of the hobbit hill which was the original plan. Pah, so it sat around in the shed for quite a while.  

One sunny day I decided I'd had enough thinking about it and just started improvising a house to make use of the door. I cut a hole out of an upside down plastic plant pot

I put a circle of the pond liner plastic on top as it had holes and thought I wouldn't want the rain pouring through. Then I started covering it with earth. 

I had a little play around with some old bits of wood

I'd cut some turf bits up while making a bit more space in the fairy garden so plonked that on top.

I asked Chris to make up some concrete to make some fairy paths. He pushed in some pebbles too. 

From top view, while it was setting.

The following day when concrete had set. It looked so cute!! 

Chris had a rejig with the wood and made it look loads better! A fairy turned up a couple of days after this, imagine that!!! 

Here is a stump we dug out of the garden last year that was still lurking behind the greenhouse so we cemented it in, I plan to make a little path up to it. 

... and whaddaya know, another fairy turned up and sat on it! 

Here's the current state of the fairy garden. 

Here I am digging out another section for the path to carry on round the bend. 

A new section cleared for some more plants, and path next to the waterfall.