Teacup Fairy Garden

After our recent tea party, we had quite a few pretty vintage teacups around, and I thought it might be fun to turn one vintage teacup into a fairy garden. Look for cute vintage teacups at your local thrift store.

Choosing Drought Tolerant Plants

The problem with planting plants into tiny containers is that they dry out too much and die. The solution is drought tolerant plants -enter succulents. I’ve been loving succulents for the last couple years, but hadn’t really considered them for a fairy garden before. What works great here, is that they are really small varieties, that are miniature plants, and so there’s room even in a tea cup for a few different kinds of tiny plants and a few little fairy accessories, like a place to sit for a rest, a book to read, and a cupcake to snack on -and really what more in life or a teacup garden, do you need?

Materials:

• Teacup
• Succulent Soil
• Succulents
• Small Stones
• Miniature Garden Chair
• Polymer Clay

How To Make A Teacup Fairy Garden:

I started out with adding some stones to the bottom of the teacup. Succulents don’t like to be wet, and there’s no drainage in the bottom of the cup, so rocks are important. Using cactus/succulent soil will help too because it’s sandy and quick draining.

I picked up a few really sweet sedum plants at the garden centre, and used one I already had. In case you’re wondering the bright green/yellow one on the left is Stone Orpine “Angelina” and the greyish/purple one at the back on the right is Stonecrop “Cape Blanco”. These are great plants for tiny gardens.

I positioned them, leaving a little room for a rock path using pea gravel and a miniature chair from the craft store. I also added a few faux mushrooms. Look for these cute accessories and other tiny things, with the doll house furniture, These miniature versions of furniture are perfect for diy fairy gardens. And now that fairy gardens have become so popular, there’s even specific fairy garden miniatures fairy houses, and more adorable fairy garden accessories at the craft store and many plant nurseries.

To really make it inviting for a fairy I wanted to make a few little fairy treats, and I made them out of polymer clay. Look for these craft supplies at any craft store.

Making the Clay Objects:

Fairy Sized Book

To make the book, start with some white clay. Use a mini rolling pin to flatten it out, and then cut it with a straight edge. After it’s cut down to the right size, use a toothpick on the edge to add some grooves to look like book pages. Next, make the cover. Roll out another colour, I used blue, quite thin, and then cut it slightly larger than the book pages. Wrap it around the white, making sure there is no gap at the back between the pages and the cover. Bake in the oven according to the package directions, I baked mine at 250 degrees for 10 min.

When you’re working with the polymer clay you could really create just about anything. Just remember to think about scale. I used the chair as my guide. Don’t be afraid to redo something if it seems a little off. Part of the beauty of this clay is that you can re-work if you’re not happy, up until you bake it. Think play dough, and have fun.

Fairy Sized Cupcake

To make the cupcake, I started out with a tiny cylinder for the cake base. To make the icing, start with a tiny ball of pink, and then flatten it out, and add it to the top of the cylinder cake. The cherry on top is a tiny ball of red clay. Put it all together and bake the same way you did for the book.

I’m warning you, making your own fairy gardens is addictive, once you get started you start thinking of all kinds of little possibilities to add to your teacup mini gardens. Enjoy. Display your teacup fairy garden outside on a side table, shelf, or grouped with larger pots, or indoors in your living room, or anywhere else.

With a pretty teacup fairy garden for Mother’s Day, life really is a party!

More Fairy Garden Inspiration

You might also like our post on how to make a DIY Fairy Garden House here.

Also be sure to check out our Teacup Fairy Village Gardens here.

You also might enjoy our Fairy Gardens post here.