Snowy egret has a friend

 I finally finished the second snowy egret for the charter school display.

This one has an actual armature, which makes him a lot more sturdy. It was sewn into him as I added the belly piece. (Which was a bit annoying.)

The new guy (gal? on left) isn't displaying his mating plumage. Just a regular snowy egret. I used the same pattern, but tilted his tail downward, which meant I needed to create an entirely new back piece and underside piece.

Okay, so it's practically a whole new pattern. Which I hope to post at some point.

I'd hoped to make one bending down into the water, or doing something cool, but I couldn't face creating another pattern from scratch last week—too much else going on.

The feet have the same glue issue, but at least the base is sturdy. The mask is slightly better, but I didn't think the bill was as successful.

Traveling companions.

The fairy garden is finished — for now

The arbor finally arrived, the dead Bacopa plants were returned to Lowe's, and we still need to cut the grass. Everything is thriving—for now. Check us out — over at The Magic Onions 2012 Fairy Garden Contest! There are lots of other great gardens featured there, and on my Pinterest board. 

The alligator loves to swim in the pond. The bridge is cute but is a bit out of scale with the other items in the garden. Something to think about as you shop, if you're picky about such things.

Zebra is hiding in the chives. Starboy just asked for some more water because Zebra wants to swim in the pond.

 Baby tiger likes to play in the cave.

 The arbor gate is beautiful! We are warned that "The arbor is not a toy, for decorative use only, contains sharp edges," So I watch Starboy carefully when he plays and he knows to be gentle with it.

Tiger climbs on a rock that Starboy found in the street during a walk with Techman.

Serenity in the garden.

Baby Giraffe checks out the well. Sometimes he likes to swim here. He is a very clean giraffe, so we are not worried about the health issues with that.

Starboy loves to play here in our shady spot! Here's how we built our garden. I think overall it probably could use one less feature (maybe lose the bridge? Not very many of the animals fit on it) but Starboy and his zoo animals love every element. Cross your fingers the new purple plants survive!

Fairy garden fail

So in addition to all of the trouble I had at Lowe's, the flowers they sold me died within about three days! Sadness!

And little did I know that the moss we put in the garden is Irish moss, and is growing like grass! I wonder if there are any fairy teens who want to make some gelt with a mowing gig?

Waldorf water bird

The river scene to promote the Waldorf-inspired charter school is, in my opinion, wholly inadequate without some authentic Los Angeles River flora and fauna.

So I worked to create a snowy egret for the scene. I started with this photo from the Bolsa Chica (I would like to find the photographer, to link back properly to his site and give him credit). 

I couldn't figure out how to mathematically draw a pattern, so I built a maquette out of a printout of the photo and some structural elements cut from magazine paper.

This was a tremendous mindbender for me, and I have no idea how I can draw the final pattern and digitize it in a way that I can offer it to all of you so you can make one. Stay tuned on that.

Have Nature Table, will travel

Techman and I have decided to support a new Waldorf-inspired charter school that is coming together with hopes of opening in 2013. We are looking for some of the educational philosophies that caused Rudolf Steiner to create the Waldorf schools in Germany in the first place—treating children with respect, including the whole child in the educational process (not just the brain), teaching children at their developmental levels and not according to norms or averages, incorporating the arts into daily lessons, and respecting and embracing nature and its systems. 

Steiner envisioned this not just for wealthy families, but for the masses, with socio-economically diverse classrooms, and this is part of El Rio's founding philosophy.

The school holds frequent public meetings, and often has tables at farmers' markets and local festivals. Waldorf philosophy incorporates the head, heart and hands, so it occurred to me that we also need to offer a visual representation of the richness of this style of education: Creative, hands-on and hand-crafted materials that tell stories and inspire one's imagination.

I'm working on a display that can travel to these events. It's a river scene, with portable materials, that also allows room for literature to be distributed on the table. Since the school is called El Rio, a river scene is in order, with the Los Angeles River as inspiration.

Miss Molly has been a tremendous help in visualizing the imaginary world that can support the information of the modern world. She helped to lay out the river, which I cut with waves lapping along the banks. I hope to knit/sew/needle felt some cattails to go in the river grass.

Miss Molly contributed some wet-on-wet watercolor fish—some day we also may create some as an activity for a collaborative project promoting the school. She helped with placement of glass river bubbles and polished stones.

It's hard to see the effect of this little world; it's a bit like a large nature table. There will be a green tablecloth to represent grassy banks underneath the tulle. The owl belongs to Miss Molly, so I'll have to create some water birds, and eventually other river creatures: frogs, turtles, snakes, birds, fauna.

There is room for literature to "float" and interact with the scene (added bonus: river stones will keep things from flying away). The table still is a work in progress, wait for its debut on June 3.

With the sparkle of the gems, the shine of the stones, and the interest of this little world, I think a lot of families will be drawn to learn more about a school that supports this type of learning every day.

Creating our fairy garden *

A work in progress!

As you saw earlier, we first chose a location. We decided that the gnarly tree with the rock and the woodland plant would be perfect. I only cracked my head three times on that branch while setting the (smelly!) wine barrel in.

The barrel was rough around the edges. 

I also realized this gorgeous, wine-tight cask would also be...water tight. It needed some drainage. Luckily I realized this before the sanding, because none of Techman's batteries for the power drill were charged. So I put them on the charger, went to town on the barrel edges with the orbital sander, and snacked on pretzels and dried cranberries with Starboy.

Sanding results were smooth and soft.

After the sanding process, the batteries finally had enough charge for nine  3/8" holes (the largest bit I could locate in Techman's tool set).

We added some broken pots and river rocks for drainage. We probably could have used bigger rocks. Then we added two full bags of organic soil. I recommend holding out several handfuls of soil to use for a garden path.

Starboy and I mapped out our plan for the arbor, the cave, the well, the pond and the bridge.

 

We made choices about where to place the plants.

 Starboy was very gentle with the plants as he planted them.

We used all of the one flat of moss I had bought. I'm glad I didn't get two! One was exactly enough. I had planned to place the path between the moss, but the moss was so tall, and a little hard to cut, and there was so much of it, I decided to lay the path on top of it. Hopefully the stones will settle in over time. You also can cut away the moss with a knife, then build the path up with a few handfuls of soil you held aside, and place the stones directly on the earth. This may look a little more realistic.

 Starboy says that the fairies live in the cave. He was surprised to see that deer come to visit too.

 I'm delighted with the way the well fits in. I may never get around to making that roof!

The arbor and bridge will be coming in the mail this week. Can't wait!

 Starboy says the deer loves to go swimming in the pond and the well.

You can read more about building fairy gardens at The Magic Onions here and here. And you can enter the 2012 contest here!

Stay tuned for a few updates as we tweak our garden!

* Here's a final look!

Fall in love with the world

Imagine Childhood is challenging us to celebrate Earth Day by celebrating our Earth.

"This year, instead of making crafts out of recycled materials or sharing our favorite environmental books, we're giving you a simple challenge: fall in love with the world all over again... and then share it with everyone you know."

As you can see, getting hella depth of field with a point-and-shoot camera was the real challenging part.

We're tagging folks via Facebook and snail mail, we'll let you know how it turns out!

Building a fairy well

Starboy said he wanted a well for his garden. Donni's idea, seen on The Magic Onions, of using a container as a base seemed like a good setup to me.

 I used a short jelly jar as the base, and dried the well upside-down so the rocks would not slide off. The small, flat rocks worked the best.

 It took half to three-quarters of a tube of silicone glue to do the well. Techman and I decided that the glue gun glue might shatter from the smooth surface of the glass. Note that this glue is not supposed to be submerged in water, so using it on the inside might not be a great idea.

 The next morning, I filled in the holes with some smaller gravel stones.

 I really like the texture.

I made a small lip so the well wouldn't look completely like rocks glued to a jar.

It's going to look great in action!

Here are two more ideas for building a well, one at The Juise, using a glue gun and rocks, and another using a tile grouting technique.

New Fairy Home

 

We decided on a location for the fairy garden!