Fairy Garden Renovations - New Concrete Patio!

Renovated Fairy Garden with New Concrete Patio

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, not only can you have a Pinterest obsession with fairy gardens and their accessories, but you can do DIY patio projects with concrete.  No, not your building supply concrete, but special fairy garden concrete.  My husband laughed.  Hey, who has the most beautiful fairy garden patio now?

Why did I need to renovate the patio?  Well, the patio furniture was unstable and kept falling over.  I would like to say the children were bothered by this, but that would be a lie.  I'll admit to needing to have an exceptional fairy garden patio that was not a fall-hazard to fairies or miniature polymer clay critters.

I find miniature gardening to be a very fun project.  Ours has stayed entirely indoors, though it probably could move outdoors.  Even being indoors, I've had problems with aphids on the violets, but I was more concerned about things blowing away or being carried off by animals.  Do you see that cute little potted geranium on the table?  It has a separate saucer underneath that could be blown away by a dog's breath. 

The kids had a great time deciding where everything should go in the garden, designating special functions to certain areas and placing polished stones as stepping stones.  I was told that we had too many bird-related accessories, so some of those went into temporarily storage until I am allowed to play with them again.

Many of the accessories came from ebay and other online sources.  I made the red toadstools myself with baked polymer clay (Fimo/Premo) and baked metal wires into their stems so that they could be staked easily in the dirt.  I also make the bird's nest with robin's eggs on a stump.  The pond is a clay pot saucer painted inside with blue acrylic pain and filled with blue flattened glass marbles.  There was a tremendous dispute over the frog needing to sit on a lily pad because "frogs don't float on water", but perhaps fairy garden frogs can defy gravity.

Instructions on Fairy Garden Concrete Patio:

 First, I got a bag of miniature garden concrete mix online.  I used the entire bag for this project.  I also got some sand from the yard as a base and used strips of cut-up black rubber mat for the edging.  I filled the edged area with 1/2" of sand and smoothed it with a spoon.  Then I added 1/2" of concrete mix and leveled that. I used part of a 12x12 panel of sliced pebble tile and pulled the pebbles off of the mesh to which they are glued (use gloves, don't find out the hard way like I did that the mesh is FIBERGLASS).  I leveled the mixes with a wood block and I placed the pebbles on the concrete mix and pushed them down until flush with the surface of the concrete mix.  Then, I brushed concrete mix off the surface of the rocks and into the spaces between them.  This doesn't clean it up entirely, but a few puffs of breath across the rocks cleans it up nicely.  I used a spray bottle of water to wet the concrete mix until there was some pooling of water.  I repeated spraying several times a day for 2 days and then let it dry. 

Brushed concrete mix off stones

Sprayed stones and mix to activate the concrete

The concrete is great!  It is hard and stable and the patio furniture is now stable.  Of course, it took only one day until the kids ask what they are going to do if they want to change it?  Ha!  After that investment, we are only going to buy fairies on sale!  I like the Cicely Mary Barker (28 June 1895 – 16 February 1973) fairy figures.  I adore the children's books and own some framed CMB fairy series prints.  They have the detail of botanical drawings and are beautiful.  I love how she mixes butterfly wings with flower petals and leaves for the fairy outfits and each fairy has a real plant as a theme, from snowdrops and violets to larch and hazelnut.  Did you know that she actually designed these costumes and dressed her sister's kindergarten students up to use a models for her art?  What a scene that would have been!