Make a Faerie Well

I made something new for Kaia's little garden: a faerie sized stone well. It was a little tedious, but very simple and did not actually take terribly long to put together. It's made entirely out of stones, sticks, hot glue, a touch of paint, and a little polymer clay, (which you could easily do without.)

I made the base out of two layers of clay. The bottom layer is a light tan, and the top, slightly smaller, layer is blue, to look like water. You could skip this entirely and just find yourself a nice, flat stone and paint the top blue if you wish. The only reason I went ahead and made mine out of clay was because I was already making other faerie accessories with it. 

Once you have your base, begin hot gluing small stones all the way around the edge. After you've got the bottom layer down, just move on up, fitting the stones together best as you can.

 When you have the depth you desire, get yourself some sturdy twigs. These are cherry tree trimmings. Glue two to the inside of the well, upright and across from each other. Glue another from the top of one upright to the top of the other, and one across them midway up. (From this one you will hang your bucket.)

 

Cut four equal sized sticks, (I made mine about half as long as my upright supports,) and two shorter sticks of equal length. Glue them together into two 'A's, like so. Glue this to the rest of your structure with a drop of hot glue under where the sticks meet at the top, and on the inside of the crossbeam so that it can attach to the upright supports as well as the top beam.

Cut two sticks long enough to connect the leg of one 'A' to the leg of the opposite 'A' and glue those in place. This will give you something to glue the rest of the roof to. Cut a thousand more little twigs of approximately the same length and start laying them across the roof, gluing top and bottom. There may have been less than a thousand. Maybe.

 Tie on your bucket. I used embroidery thread because I couldn't find anything else at the time, and I may change that out eventually. A thin twine would probably look better. I made our bucket out of polymer clay, but I know I have seen tiny little buckets at hobby and craft shops that would be perfect. I also cut two very small sections of stick and glued them on to the end of the bucket-holding crossbeam, to be the crank handle.

Now go around with a fine brush and put a little paint over anywhere the hot glue shows. I used gold to match the rest of our faerie garden furniture, but you may want to use something a bit more mortar coloured. Place in your faerie garden, (...or on your D&D table, by your miniature train set, etc...) and enjoy! I am planning to cut the sticks on our roof a little more even, too, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Ours is just under 1 1/2 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches tall.