We have always been into the lives of forest fairies around our house.

From some of our earliest days of walking the trails, it didn’t take much convincing to make us believers that some forests are truly the land of fairy people.

It’s one of those things that we casually weave into stories about the forest…or at least it was until our pals Maureen and William gifted us with the absolutely spectacular book How to Find Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker

This magical pop-up book filled with fairies that roam nature from gardens and hedgerows to marshes and forests inspired us from the moment we opened it…and lately there has been a whole lotta fairy action around our house.

So, it was no surprise that, when I suggested we hit the Lazo Marsh for a nature walk recently, it turned into a bit of a forest fairy adventure.

All along we’d planned on making a nature craft after our leisurely stroll through the marsh.

But, what evolved from the collecting of leaves and moss was three forest fairies who are all about the happy factor because “Fairies would never be sad, mommy. They can fly,” so the tiny person tells me.

I like this craft – another one of those rare ones that we totally made up on the fly – because it weaves in all kinds of cool things from nature with some of the prettier things from the craft store (like paper, call me pretty paper junkie).

It’s also one of those that I can imagine doing versions of depending on the time of year. I am all for the multipurposing of craft ideas.

Here’s what you need:

- Nature-themed craft paper
- Wooden clothes pins
- Leaves and moss collected on a recent nature walk
- A hot glue gun (parents only, so hot)
- a hole punch
- Scissors
- Grasses of string
- a marker

Directions:

1. Fold a piece of craft paper in half, trace and cut out a pair of fairy wings.

2. Take the clothes pin and hot glue it to the wings.

3. Take the moss (hair) and leaves (fairy clothes) and glue them on the clothes pin.

4. Punch a hole in one of the fairy wings and string the grass or string through it. Hang where you like.

That’s all there is to it. This was a really cute and fun way to plug into nature a bit more through stories and create some cute characters that can go (even if it’s only figuratively) out to the forest with us next time.

Thanks Maureen and William for the wonderful inspiration!