Thanksgiving Sale at Fairyfolk

Happy Thanksgiving to ALL! Thank you for all the blessings you have bestowed upon me and my family. We are eternally grateful for all we have.

In celebration of the fantastic year Fairyfolk has had, we are having a Black Friday Sale! Everything in the shop is 10% off... everything, everything, everything :-)

To redeem your 10% discount, enter the coupon code: BLACKFRIDAY11 at Etsy Checkout and 10% will automatically be taken off your total.


BLACKFRIDAY11 coupon code is valid for the whole weekend through Monday 28th November 2011.

Here's a small sampling of what you might find at Fairyfolk...

Happy Thanksgiving from Fairyfolk, my Friends :-)
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Let's make an Easy Banner

I hope you all had a super fun Halloween. We did... Kitty enjoyed being a 'scary' witch and Teddy loved being Puff the Magic Dragon. Lots of candy was collected and, yes, the Pumpkin Fairy did come in the night and whisk it all away. In its stead, she left Kitty a gorgeously warm furry jacket and a sweet porcelain candle holder and she left Teddy a knight and battle horse. They were both utterly delighted.

Today we made a banner in Autumn colors. As you know by now, I love easy crafts the best... this is no exception.


All we needed was;
Autumn colored paper,
scissors
ribbon
stapler



We cut the Autumn colored paper into triangles.

Teddy cut the desired length of ribbon.

We folded about half an inch of each triangle over.


And cut off the protruding point.


We threaded the ribbon under the fold...


And stapled it to the paper triangle.


Repeat with each colorful paper triangle and... Voila! Your banner is complete!


Our living room looks wonderfully festive and we await Thanksgiving eagerly!
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Let's make a Harvest Corn Necklace.

Mexican corn has always fascinated me... the colors are just amazing!!! Where I'm from, we only got the yellow kind... we called it mealies. The word, surprisingly comes from Portuguese... oh, what a melting pot South Africa is. One thing is sure, we really do LOVE our mealies for dinner!


One of Kitty's friends lost her first tooth this time last year. Instead of leaving her money, the Tooth Fairy left her a beautiful necklace made from Mexican corn. When Kitty saw an ear of Mexican corn in the market the other day, she immediately asked if we could make her a necklace just like the Tooth Fairy left for Fin. 'Of course', I said.

When we got home, we shucked the corn (I've always wanted to say that!)


We covered the corn kernels with water and soaked them for a couple of days to soften them.


When they were nice and soft, we rinsed and dried them.

We threaded a medium sized needle with embroidery thread. Kitty threaded most of her necklace herself. She chose a brightly colored corn kernel, laid it on the wooden cutting board and pierced the needle through it until it hit the board.


Then she turned the needle upwards and pushed the corn all the way through, being careful not to prick her fingers.


The corn kernels are still quite tough, so care with the needle has to be taken and this method seemed the safest for her.


It was painstaking work and I was proud of her for sticking with it. With each new colored corn kernel, her necklace grew more and more beautiful.

When she had threaded it long enough, we tied the two ends together and Voila! Kitty has worn it all day... I think she thinks she'll grow up to be a Tooth Fairy :-)


As we worked with the corn, we talked about how each little kernel is a seed. That if we planted it and watered it, it would grow into a great big corn plant. We talked about how we cook corn, the different things we can do with corn. We talked about how people can grind the corn kernels into corn flour and make corn bread and corn tortillas. I told her all about the sweet yellow corn we got as kids in South Africa and how we called it 'mealies'. After saying the word a few times, we agreed that it did sound like a funny name for corn. We laughed.

Every day with our children is a gift.

Blessings and magic,
Donni

Make a Thanksgiving Walnut Candle.

Continuing with our Handmade Holidays, today we made sweet little walnut candles. They are enchanting little gifts from nature, made with walnut shells and beeswax. They will flicker warmly on our Thanksgiving table.

We needed...

walnuts (halved and shelled) and other pods

a jar of beeswax

candle wicks

and scissors

We used 3 walnut halves, a seed pod and a big acorn cap.

Place you candle wick into the walnut and measure how long you need your wick to be. Cut it accordingly.

We needed 4 shorter wicks for the walnuts and acorn cap and one longer one for our bigger pod.

Now it is time to melt the beeswax. I made a bain-marie by filling a pot with a few inches of water and bringing it to the boil. When your water is boiling, put your jar of wax in the boiling water. This gently melts your beeswax. Please be careful... boiling water and melted wax is hot!

When we work with melted wax, I always have a bowl of iced water prepared. Touch wood, we haven't burnt ourselves as we are very careful, but I feel safer knowing that if an accident happened, I could put a burn in cold water immediately.
(Note: this is from a reader who says... "I wanted to let you know, though, that burns should never be put in ice water, nor should a burn be iced. You should not even use cold water, it can cause cold damage to the sensitive skin. Instead, immerse the burn in room temp or cool water to help bring down the swelling and help with the pain, or run cool / room temp water over it")

Once the beeswax is melted, it takes on a gorgeous golden glow... just like honey, as K noticed. And it smells wonderful too.

I use a paper towel when I pour melted wax. Dab a little melted wax onto the paper towel and then fix your walnut to the wax.

This holds your walnut in place for you to pour the wax safely into.

Pour the melted wax right up to the rim of the walnut.

After a few minutes, the wax hardens enough for you to insert your wick. The cooling wax holds your wick in place.

We made 4 candles... 2 walnut, 1 acorn and 1 seed pod.

Don't they look charming? K thinks they are just the right size to fit on a bunny's table... I had a wonderful flash of her imagination when she said that :-)

We lit one just to see that it really does work. It gives off the sweetest honey smell... fragrance from Mother Nature herself.

The others, we have packed away in a special place... we are saving them to decorate our Thanksgiving table with. We will sit around our table smiling and loving and laughing while our little candles flicker happily, reminding us of all we have to be thankful for.

Check out our other Handmade Christmas decorations and these bright nature-inspired Felted Wool Acorn Christmas Tree Decorations here.

Blessings and magic.