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Make your own Magical Toadstools
Published 09.23.2009 | Permanent Link | Comments (6)
Magical Toadstools for your own piece of Fairyland
By Brenda Ponnay
My daughter and I have been on a fairy kick lately, so for this month's craft I thought we would make little toadstools for our own little imaginary fairy woodland. We live in a small beach town in Southern California, and the closest we get to a real forest is some pine trees at the local park. I've never seen any real toadstools growing around here, so we took matters into our own hands and made some!
All we needed for this craft were wooden drawer pulls from a local hardware store and paint. We also bought some small wood plugs, the kind you use to cover exposed screws on wooden furniture. We used those to make little bugs to sit on our toadstools.
Our friendly hardware-store employee suggested we sand the wood before we painted it, but in our haste many of the knobs got painted without being sanded first, and that worked just fine. On some of them we taped off the bottom portion with masking tape to avoid painty fingerprints. The smaller knobs can be a bit challenging for little fingers to paint, but all the kids who did this craft with me enjoyed themselves.
We painted most of our mushrooms red with white polka dots to imitate the popular fly agaric mushroom (whose scientific name is Amanita Muscaria). To give the kids something to do while the red paint dried, I handed out some mushroom coloring sheets. You can download it here if you'd like to play along.
When the red paint was dry we turned our painted brushes over and used the handle end to create the dots like so:
While the white paint was drying, we created little terrariums for our toadstools to live in. Making a terrarium is very easy. First, we gathered up some old pickle and jam jars, soaked them to remove the labels, and washed them. Next, we put about in inch of wet rocks in each jar.
On top of the rocks we put about a half-inch layer of peat moss (which can be bought at craft stores by the bag). This creates a barrier between the rocks and the real growing moss and is supposed to keep things from getting moldy, though don't quote me on that. Then on top of that moss we added some Scotch moss that I bought at our local nursery. I chose it because I thought the little white flowers were cute, but any kind of moss will do.
If you don't want to spend the money to buy a flat of moss ground cover, you might try looking on the south side of your house.
I think terrariums are an experiment in general. If you are the gardening type you might have fun figuring out what will grow in a jar and what won't. If you aren't the gardening type you might like to create a little faux terrarium with a small jar, some dirt colored play dough and some peat moss. No water required!
Some of the mushrooms didn't want to stay upright, so we broke some toothpicks in half and glued them inside the bottom of the knob where normally a screw would go to attach to a drawer. Thick glue, like bead and glass adhesive, worked really well. While we we had the glue out, we added eyeballs to some of our mushrooms and the little button ladybugs that we had painted earlier.
The toothpicks really helped the toadstools stay up. We had so many toadstools left over from our fun crafting session, we planted some moss in other containers too and spread the toadstool love.
If you liked this craft you might want to make some fairy wings and toadstool cupcakes and make a party of it!
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About this column
This is a year-round Holiday column. Kids love Holidays. As parents we have come to appreciate how Holidays seem to help structure our lives. Plus, any excuse to have fun sounds good to us!
We'll admit it, now that we're parents, we secretly look for Holidays to celebrate and between National, Secular, Unofficial and Bizarre Holidays, we think there are enough days out there to keep us inspired every week.
This column will be a place where you can get inspiration for how to enjoy time with your kids. Crafting projects and ideas will be posted on Thursdays by our brilliant contributors (see below). Other fun ideas will be posted here throughout the week as the inspiration hits us!
About our Craft Contributors
Ellen Luckett Baker is the author of the long thread, a blog about handmade goods. She has always enjoyed making things, but the flexibility of staying at home with her two daughters along with the creative inspiration they provide has led her to craft on a daily basis. Combining her love of graphic design and sewing, she has created an Etsy shop selling machine embroidery designs and sewing patterns.
Ellen lives in Atlanta with her husband and two young daughters. She holds a B.A. in Art History and a Master's of Public Administration with a focus in Non-Profit Management.
Cindy Hopper was fortunate to be raised in a family who appreciated the arts. This background led to a Bachelor's Degree in Art Education. With a keen eye for design and color, Cindy has continued her love of art and is now passing her creative skills on to her three children. Cindy's family and friends are the beneficiaries of her passion for fun and meaningful creative projects. Cindy's personal blog, Skip to My Lou, has taken her love of a project to new levels. Postings keep the family busy -– from testing new recipes for holiday treats to designing and building floats for a neighborhood parade to making fabric rolls to hold crayons to creating themed parties. Cindy seems to have an unending supply of ideas for gifts, parties and rainy days.
Marie LeBaron is a 30 something stay at home mom in Utah. Before life as a mother, she graduated with a teaching degree in Early Childhood & Elementary Education, after which she taught four years of Kindergarten. After her first child was born, she decided to read books and sing silly songs at home. She misses the classroom, but she now gets to bring the fun and learning into her home and ours. You’ll see her kids a lot in these projects as they are her guinea pigs and for whom she's creative. You can follow more of her projects at her personal blog Make and Takes.
Brenda Ponnay is a stealthy secret agent who juggles parenthood to her adorable daughter by day and freelance graphic design by night. Whether it's painting, baking, drawing, making castles out of card board boxes or just doing the laundry with flair, Brenda Ponnay has finally discovered (at the ripe old age of thirty-six) that what really makes her happy is being creative every single day.
Brenda lives in Southern California with her husband, daughter, three cats and thirty-seven pet birds. You can read about all her crazy adventures on her personal blog: Secret Agent Josephine.
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This column is only for entertainment purposes. Any recommendations or information provided herein should not be used as a substitute for advice by a trained professional. For a full statement of our site policies, please click here.
Comments (6):
Jingle said:
These are fabulous! I love them!
Posted on September 24, 2009 09:53
Betsy said:
So Cute. What a fun idea.
Posted on September 24, 2009 10:11
Kimberly said:
So cute! Love it.
Posted on September 24, 2009 13:42
Momsy said:
SO cute!
Posted on September 24, 2009 16:27
Annie said:
Cuteness! Great idea for kids and adults alike!
Posted on September 26, 2009 11:48
Amy @ Living Locurto said:
This is adorable! I want to make toadstools now:-) The bugs are the cutest things. Great ideas!
Posted on October 2, 2009 23:39