Making Art Together Nature Sculpture

Building Fairy Houses

Diana MacKenzie
June 24, 2013

Do you have someone in your family captivated with fairies, fantasy or secret natural worlds? Why not spend a day outside together foraging for natural materials and building fairy houses!

A fairy house made out of tree bark, wooden pieces, grasses, shells, flowers, and pebbles.

When we spent a day recently making our own fairy house garden, we gathered lots of different materials from the Museum grounds and in our backyards. What started out as an unruly mound of twigs, leaves, dried flowers, raffia, stones, shells, bark, dried moss and pine cones turned into beautiful little dwellings perched in trees and nestled under rocks. We were even able to get tree stumps and hang little wooden platforms in the red maple trees in The Museum’s courtyard. If you were looking to attach materials together, we recommend hot glue and a tacky glue for this activity.

A handmade fairy house perched on a wooden tree trunk slice wedged within tree branches.
Two young children sit and smile outside near their handmade fairy homes.
Two fairy houses made out of barks and grasses perched in trees on wooden planks and trunk slices.
Handmade fairy houses made out of assortments of natural materials including seashells, bark, and grasses.
There are endless possibilities with how you can use natural materials to make your houses. So step outside and see what you can create!
Diana, smiling wearing an orange scarf and brown shirt.

Diana MacKenzie

Public Art Program Educator from 2007-2016, Diana has a BFA in Printmaking from Syracuse University and creates mixed-media works inspired by her travels, combining her interests in printmaking and sculpture. She received her M.A.T. from Mount Holyoke College in June 2017, and continues teaching visual arts to children and adults.
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