Bendy Fairies Tutorial

[AnnaReilly]

I've been addicted to making these little bendy fairies. (A friend showed me how to make them and I think she got the instructions on-line somewhere, but I'm not sure where.)



1. Take a pipe cleaner and bend it in half.
2 & 3. Pinch the top of the bend and fold up the two ends (leaving a little nub where you were holding it.)
4. Bend the two ends down (these will be the arms.)
5. Fold those ends back in towards the center.
6. Follow steps 3 & 4 for the remaining ends forming legs.
7. Tightly wrap 6-strand embroidery floss around the bend on the leg (about 1/4 inch on either side of the bend.
8. Fold the leg up and continue wrapping the floss around and up the leg. (It takes a bit of practice to get the floss wrapped tightly and evenly so that none of the pipe cleaner fuzz pokes through.)
9 & 10. Follow steps 7 & 8 for the two arms and other leg.
11. Wrap the floss around the tops of the legs and base of the arms to form a body.
12. Glue a 10mm bead to the top of the body pushing the small part you pinched in step 2 into the hole of the bead.

Then you can add the hair and clothes! I made clothes for them out of pieces of ribbon or silk flowers and added hair from more embroidery floss.

I made a TON of these little dolls. You can see them here:
http://www.geocities.com/annareillyart/AR_Fairy_Dolls.html

[Ice]

Gosh, that brings back memories. I used to make something like that with felt. I got the idea out of a Hearth Song catalog back in the day. *grin* Yours are TONS cuter, though. *giggle* I LOVE the winter fairies.

[PinkSongFlower]

Those are really cute! They remind me of Salley Mavor's little faery dolls.

[turtle]

My parents ran into Salley at a Solstice party last week and got a tour of her studio.  My dad was so impressed that he bought my stepmother one of the new big fairies as a gift.  They really are absolutely adorable, and I don't usually like that frufru sort of stuff.

What's nice is that Salley's just come out with a how-to book with a bunch of projects in it, not all fairies.  Her website is at: http://www.weefolkstudio.com/

-Turtle

[wizkid]

These are too cute!

They remind of the "Halfpenny" dolls I used to love as a child. They had little cloth heads with thread for hair, though.

[brokenclown]

Those are adorable. I made little tiny dollies out of skewers and embroidery floss. Their voodoo dollies. I also thread some seed beads to hang off the arms and stuff. I gave them a little face with paint. Their cute, and so mystical. They come out different everytime, all you have to do is change the colours and the face and the feathers and beads.

[ilovepaper]

Thanks for bumping this back up, I would have never seen it. I need to make a bunch of inexpensive items for a Christmas Fair at my kid's school and the holly leaf fairies would be a perfect idea. They are all adorable.