We keep hearing a noise behind the door of that little cupboard. What is it, we ask?

Well, looky here! It's a fairy, happily swinging.
...
This project began with another Michaels hutch.

We were originally going to use something more woodsy and fairyish for the handle but ran out of time, so the original knob went back on.

Jenna decided she wanted the cupboard to look natural, so she stained it dark walnut.

Yep, this is what I wanted, Nana.

Here is the first version, using a fairy Christmas ornament from my stash.
The swing was made with bright gold cord and a white seat which Jenna painted dark brown to suggest wood. Rather than try to replace the gold cord, she just painted it dark green and added fine model railroad greenery to suggest it was a natural vine. Unfortunately, it doesn't show up too well here, but it looks really good.
She also painted gold and green glitter on the wings, added glittery green paint as trim on her dress, and glued some moss and flowers to her swing.
But as she was preparing to glue in the moss and flowers on the ground and around the fairy, she decided it was too dark. "What can we do to make it brighter, Nana?"

I knew there was a good reason I saved that wonderful page of blue sky and clouds from that magazine ad!

Here'a rough pattern for the back of the hutch.

But it needed to be bigger in order to go all the way to the bottom.

The fairy was already glued and fastened firmly in place, so we just sort of pulled her up out of the way.

... and held her in place with a big rubber band while Jenna worked inside.

Oh yes, this is much better.

Notice that ladybug? It's a thumbtack which we used to hold the swing in place, with some super glue added. Jenna glued moss around it so it would look as if the ladybug were crawling along a branch or something like that.

Here she has added flowers on the right side, using inexpensive artificial sprigs. This actually looks much prettier in real life; for some reason the light is wrong and washes it out too much.

And here is our fairy, happily swinging in her cupboard.
NEXT: >>