Fairy nook for backyard garden: part 1: upcycling a toy oven

When the op shop refused to take Sylvia's toy oven because the door was broken I took it home and made it into a fairy nook for our back garden.  The project took 3 months of working on it on and off. In fact it took so long to transform the toy into a backyard feature that I found I had many photos I wanted to share and record what I did.  I decided to divide them into four posts starting here with Part 1 (with links to the next three to come):

• Part 1: upcycling a toy oven
• Part 2: painting
• Part 3: creating the cafe
• Part 4 creating the garden
  
  

This is the toy oven when Sylvia was given it on her second Christmas in 2011.  It looked so clean.  By the time we took it to the op shop (aka charity shop or opportunity shop) to be sold secondhand.it had stickers and kiddie writing and knocks and scratches.  (I am sure I took a photo of it then but can't find it.)  The main problem for the op shop was that the front door of the oven was with it but had fallen off.  It was rejected.  

I was so sad it could not go to another kid to give them as much joy as it had given Sylvia.  I thought about using it for storage and then I decided we could make a fairy garden out of it.  At the time I was not really sure how it would look.  Certainly not how it looks today.  We watched India Rose Crawford's Frog and Toad videos and dreamed of such creativity.  We collected bits and pieces and created something out of the oven that we now love. 

First those bright pinks and yellows had to be painted over.  We were aiming for a more rustic woodland fairy house than a cutsie cartoon.  I experimented with painting vines and now want to paint more vines all over the house.  More photos and reflections on the painting to come in Part 2.

We did a lot of shopping and brainstorming.  As we wandered through op shops and second hand shops we looked for ideas.  We tried to avoid buying new things but there were some bits from two dollar bargain shops that we loved.  We also looked out for leaves and gum nuts in parks and by footpaths.  Even the sticks from our icy poles (popsicles) were set aside.  At one stage I had visions of making them into a picket fence or a well.

Sylvia had a few shopping trips with her dad after they visited cafes.  She came home with tiny vases, jewellery, fake flowers and a miniature organ, as well as bags of stones and fake grass.  She had lots of ideas for making the garden pretty.  And she was happy to take some of the unused items to decorate her own room.

As well as buying some stuff, we searched through the junk collections that somehow accumulate at home, despite my best efforts.  We even mined the dolls house for ideas.  Our junk suddenly looked shiny and full of inspiration.  If only that plastic spider had all eight legs it might have been fun to sit in a corner with a web.

One afternoon I stopped during my ride along the bike path and collected old leaves, dried buds and sticks.  I found some dried palm leaves that I thought about weaving into a table cloth.  As I inspected an old fallen tree for straight sticks, a little girl asked me what I was doing.  Caught off guard, I replied, it's a project.  I wish I had chatted to her about our fairy garden but the timing was not right!  I might have looked like a crazy lady riding home with a bag full of sticks and some might even find it hard to imagine our situation of having this pile of twigs and leaves on the kitchen bench top for a few weeks!  There were moments when the project seemed to be taking over our lives!

After painting the old oven, we focused on the little cafe inside the old oven (more to come in Part 3).  This involved making a lot of furniture and household items.  I had painted it lighter inside because I knew that it would be harder to see inside.  A friend of mine has donated some fairy lights for inside the cafe.  I am still unsure how they will cope with the outdoors.  But the fairy garden had had long enough on the kitchen table.

Then I turned my attention to the garden on top (more to come in Part 4) where there had once been hotplates and a clock.  Pinterest gave me so many ideas such as spades made out of old coke cans, garden furniture, little streams of tiny blue stones and rustic swings.  Instead we ended up with a park bench and minions at a fireplace by a stone footpath.  It still seemed a bit magical to us.

It was hard to stop.  There was always one more thing we could add.  It took great resolve to set out on the adventure of making the fairy garden and great resolve to decide it was time to declare it finished.  Finally it was time to say enough and put away the paints and glue, to put away the clutter we had gathered by the sofa, to take the remaining sticks and leaves to the compost bin, to sort through all the rest of then leftover detritus and take the fairy garden (aka the fairy nook because that was all I could fit on the sign) to our backyard where it is to come alive.

I wanted it among the plants but on the table where Sylvia has a lot of little pots so that we can see inside it without needing to be at fairy height on the ground.  I quite liked the twig ladder that you can see in the above photo.  The dark green and browns we had painted the walls helped it to fit into the garden nicely.  Of course now it makes me wish for time for more projects - painting a new mural on the back fence, painting plants on our walls, making a tiny Halloween house or even taking the cupboard that our neighbours have put out on the pavement to make another fairy garden.  If only ...

I was glad I had glued everything down when it was being carried about but the test came when the fairy nook was outside on rainy days.  The cafe seemed fairly protected from the rain.  Unfortunately the little garden had to return into our lounge room when I decided that the PVA glue in the garden section was getting a bit soggy and then some of the rungs fell off the ladder.  I bought some Gorilla glue that is reportedly waterproof.  It seems pretty strong.  

I will say it again.  It is hard to finish a project like this.  For a time it seemed to be constantly evolving and then our ideas became regrets when there was no more to do.  Sylvia and I talked about how much she would have loved it as a child.  (She still loves it as a teenager and I love it as an adult so we agree it not just for children.)  So we found some old little figures and had fun placing them around the fairy nook.  They were just visitors and not glued down.  It is good the nook has some scope for change.  I am not sure how safe the tiny bits and pieces would be for little kids but I am sure they would find it fun and magical.

Shadow has been very interested in this project.  My brother suggested he is like Gargamel's cat, Azrael, in The Smurfs.  Of course he is a far more benign presence.  He is quite happy for the nook to be part of the garden, just so long as he still has his patch of outdoor table where he loves to sit.  I find it very satisfying to see the fairy nook outside and feel proud that we created it.

My series of fairy nook posts:

• Part 1: upcycling a toy oven - a fairy nook overview (this post)
  
• Part 2: painting
• Part 3: creating the cafe
• Part 4: creating the garden