Making Flower Fairies & Elves

The girls have been busy crafting on and off this summer. While I pour myself over waldorf books and lesson plans, the freedom and imagination nurtured by a waldorf inspired education has allowed me the time to prepare for the challenging year ahead.

I love so much about Waldorf education, but one of the things I love is how it nurtures the imagination and creativity in children. So in-tuned with the natural development of the human being is it, that I find myself tickled to see how many waldorf inspired children work with their hands to create such beautiful and special treasures that are truly age appropriate :D I've seen it on so many other blogs and I see it in my own house.

A few years ago, when we just were coming to waldorf education, I came across a very easy tutorial on how to make simple flower fairies. Through the years, we've made many - for the girls play, for decoration, for gifts for friends and little cousins, and for dressing up gifts (these tie on really well to packages)...so one of the items the girls will be making this Christmas will be Christmas fairies (shhhhh...don't let our family know)...


You will need to run to a crafts store where you will find all of these items. Many of your crafty mommas will already have them at home...

Supplies:
~wooden beads of various sizes if you are making families
~pipe cleaners
~silk flowers
~tacky glue
~embroidery floss
~feathers
~skinny sharpies of various colors (if you want to put faces on them)
~scissors

The tutorial can be found here. Here are some pictures of the fairies the girls made this morning...(winter themed)

These are a couple that Charley made a while ago with faces...

And Elena's with faces...

An acorn boy and a Christmas elf...

And Charley's Winter Fairy Queen...

Elena's Winter Fairy, trying out various silk flowers to hold in stead of a scepter...

A baby she made a while back (without the wings)...we always say they are elves when they don't have wings. Otherwise, we've made fairies and angels with feathered wings.

These are some we made years ago to be attached to presents.

For a nephew who loved the dark spiderman and his sister, who loved fairies...(I wrapped black wool roving around the design to make the spiderman - which he ripped right off as a 3 yr old rough and tumble boy! So I wouldn't recommend these for the under 5 crowd, unless they are gentle players or will mainly be decorative)...

And some Star Wars themed gifts for two of my nephews who can't get enough of Star Wars :D I used the same flower fairy formula and made clothing out of felt and O.B. Wan's beard is wool glued to the bead.

So many possibilities! Have fun with this one! You could make these as party favors for birthdays, stocking stuffers for the holidays, wrapping embelishments, make them into Saints for those in Grade 2 or those studying the Saints, seasonal/nature table spreads, storytelling, toothfairy gifts, or just plain freeplay fun!

You can see a gift inspired by these that the toothfairy left for the girls when Charley had lost a tooth here. I wrapped the edges with embroidery floss to avoid the pinchy wire, which I recommend doing :D These can poke when the ends are not folded properly.