Fairy Garden Mushrooms

Since spring is right around the corner, I am starting to put together some decorations for my fairy garden I will be putting in to my landscape outside my house.

My thought behind how fairies and pixies would decorate their homes and gardens would be they would use things they find and also reuse things others throw out to help their home, Mother Earth. (as we all should) For this tutorial, all you need is a wine cork, a bottle cap and some paints and other things we will cover in the next steps. Let's get to it!

The supplies you will need is as follows:

- a wine cork

- a bottle cap

- acrylic paints (any colors you want to paint your mushroom)

- a sealant (I used a spray paint variety)

- a well ventilated area

- a work surface you don't really care about (or cover a surface with something you don't care about)

- paint brushes (I am using a medium sized for coverage and a small one for the details)

- a paint palette of some form

- water and a paper towel for cleaning your brush

- Hot glue or E6000 glue

Optional:

- a doming block and punch

- a hammer

This isn't really that important, but I did want to include it in case you all were wondering.

Wine corks are not all made the same. You have your traditional wine corks that are cork wood and you have your synthetic corks. Don't feel like you NEED to use real cork. I found the synthetic corks take paint a lot better than the cork, but they both work fine. There are the plastic ones you may find, but they aren't going to work as well.

As for the bottle cap, that doesn't really change much from cap to cap, just use whatever. We are painting it so if it has a logo on it, that's oki doki artichokie.

Yea yea yea, I know, I am starting out with an optional step.

All it is for is for making the top of your mushroom have a domed look rather than the flat top of the bottle cap. Both are cute and both work, so it's all good.

This step uses the optional equipment of a doming block and a hammer, so if you don't have these tools and want to skip to the next step, feel free.

If you do want to stick with me, here is what you are going to do:

Take your bottle cap. Turn it so the inside it up and use your doming block, the "domer stick" (what I like to call the punch) and your hammer and dome it out in the largest spot on your block. You can make it as domed as you want! I went up to the second smallest with mine.

Once you have it domed to your liking, let's move on!

We are going start with a primer. I was in a pinch and couldn't find my primer, so I used just flat white acrylic paint for this, but if you have actual primer paint, I would say use that.

I grabbed a medium sized paint brush for this step since it is all about coverage rather than detail.

All you need to do is take your paint brush and paint the top of your bottle cap and fully cover your wine cork with it as well.

Let it set until it is dry and then we can move on.

Once your primer is dried, break out the colors you want to paint your mushrooms. You can do something fun like I did with green and red with the white spots. Very Smurfs-y. Or you can go more naturale and make them more realistic even, but for the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to stick with the Smurfs version.

Make sure to wash out your brush and dry it. Since we are doing the base paints, using the medium brush again would be best.

For the top, you want to start with your base color. Use just a basic color; red, blue, green are great as they will contrast with the spots.

Set that aside so it can dry before you add the spots.

Next get your cork, and use a brown and mix it with a little white to make it a tan and paint it all over. Once you have that, use just plain white and start at one end of the cork (we will refer to this at the top from now on) and fade it down in to the tan to create a gradient between the two.

Once you have that, set that aside as well and let it dry....

Once your base layer is all set, we can go ahead and add in the details.

For this step, if you have a smaller brush, it would be better since these details are small.... ish.

For the top, all you need is white paint. Make sure your brush is clean and dried before starting and just create happy little white circles on your top. You can do different sizes to make it even more Smurfy, or just do all the same size. It is up to you!

After you get that, set it aside and let it dry. Let's move on to your "stem", a.k.a your cork. For the details on this one, you only need black paint. Again, make sure your brush is clean and dried. Take your black paint and lightly paint vertical streaks along the length of the cork. Try not to make them uniform since we want it to be more natural looking.

Once you have it the way you want... you guessed it! Set it aside and let it dry.

We are almost done! Just a couple more steps and you are on your way to putting these in your fairy garden.

This step we are going to seal the paint. Since it is acrylic, it won't stand up in the elements as well if we leave it just as is.

First, I want to point out in this step, the best plan of action is making sure you are in a good ventilated area or next to an open window where the fumes can escape. Also, as another precaution, grab a mask. We don't want you breathing in the fumes from your sealant.

Now grab your sealant. If you are using a paint-on variety, use a brush you don't really care about in case it gets ruined. Or if you have a spray sealant like I am using, then you may also want to set up a cardboard box or some form of work area so the sealant doesn't get all over the room.

Cover all sides of your cork with the sealant. You don't really have to worry about the top as we will take care of that in the next step. And the bottom will most likely be in the soil, so make sure you do cover that. Let it set.

Your top, just get the top that you painted. The bottom of the cap should still have the rubber seal on it so that will help with the next step.

Set that aside.. and then move on to the last step once they are dry.

Finally on to the final step of making your fairy garden mushroom.

This step we are taking our hot glue or E6000 like I am using and gluing your top to the stem.

Hold the top to the stem with your non dominant hand and use your dominant hand to fill the gap under the top around the stem with glue.

If you are using a glue that needs time to dry, make sure you let this happen before it is complete.

Once it is dry though, you have no finished your mushroom! Use this tutorial to make as many as you want to add to your garden. It's a simple and easy way to reuse materials and also make fun decorations.

OPTIONAL: If you wanted to, you could also take a couple small nails or screws and glue them to the bottom of the stem as stabilizers. Cuz we all have some loose screws laying around somewhere ;)