Building a Faery-Elf House

-by D. J. Conway
Do you have faeries, elves, brownies, or gnomes sharing your home with you? Would you like to have them? 

     Inviting faeries, elves, or other little people to share your home and yard through a faery house is an interesting project for both adults and children. Building a house for them can be as simple or as elaborate as you please. Creating and furnishing such a place is an excellent family or personal project.

    Having faeries, gnomes, brownies, and elves share your home has distinct advantages. These Little People take personal pride in protecting and prospering in their human friends as well as keeping live interesting and fascinating. The Little People take delight in playing with pets in games of hide-and-seek. They love to participate in rituals and Pagan celebrations of all kinds. They will even help in your garden, creating healthier plants and beautiful blossoms.

    To create a special inside house for these little people, you will need: a cardboard box with a lid (this doesn't have to be very big); some poster-board; scraps of rich-looking material; glue or tape; scissors; a sharp knife; acrylic or poster paints, or appropriate wrapping paper; pencil; needle and thread.

    With the pencil, mark out the doors and windows on the box in the shape and places you want them. Cut the door across the top, bottom, and one side, bending the other side back to create a door. Cut out the windows, leaving narrow strips to simulate panes if you wish.

    You can paint the box to simulate bricks, stones, or boards.

    Cut a piece of poster-board one inch wider than the lid and as long as you want the roof to peak to be high. Lightly score the poster-board crosswise in the middle with the knife so it can be neatly creased to make the peak of the roof. Center the roof with a half-inch overhang on each side and glue into place on the lid.  The ends are filled in by cutting out triangular pieces of poster-board and inserting into the ends of the roof. You want the roof-lid to be removable so you can redecorate inside.

    Faeries like shiny things, so you might use a clear glue on the roof and sprinkle on colored glitter. You might also glue on dried moss and small fir cones.

    Tiny strips of cloth can be fastened at the windows fo rcurtains and placed on the floor for rugs. Caps from cans and bottles become little tables; small boxes, filled with cotton anc covered with velvet material, are beds. Let your imagination go, furnishing the faery house with whimsy and dreams