Fairy Surprise Balls

My newest fascination is making Fairy Surprise Balls. I have always loved things like this. My favorite Fairy Gift is Claresa's Fairy Parcel Game. I love to put them together and choose which fairy items I will use inside the layers.

So, the next logical step was to even further miniaturize (made up word possibly?) the parcel with surprise balls. I researched the technique on line with a few different sites, but they all seemed to be so perfect looking and rather large (kind of defeating the purpose on something smaller than a parcel).

My daughter's birthday was coming up so I decided to send her my first prototype. I used a Fairy Bath Fizzie as the center prize and began clumsily wrapping the crepe paper around the fizzie. The crepe paper was very hard to work with and kept sliding off the prize and/or twisting from the roll. It kept crossing my mind that this would be the first and last one I would try.

After a few layers around the fizzie I tried to wrap in a few dark chocolate m&ms (daughter loves them) and they were falling out all over the place. Finally got a couple of layers around them and then I tried the jelly bellies.

I have so many annoyances that occur naturally in my life I don't know why I insist on going out and getting more, causing more....but I do and this was one screaming example of my need for more annoying things!

I digress, I was determined as I usually am to finish and get this thing in the mail in some sort of condition for my daughter to open. Luckily it was not the only present. I had earlier that week gone looking for "Colorado" things to send to her. You would think that would be easy since I live in Colorado. Well it isn't. There is a serious lack of "Colorado" things here. I did manage to "settle" on a spoon rest and some fairy soap (made in Kentucky) to add to the box. Oh, and a check..that hopefully will make up for the spoon rest.

So she called me on her birthday to say she had opened the package and had her brother sent her that little ceramic bowl? He is 12. No, I said, the artist is from Colorado and he signed the bottom (lame).

Anyway...she loved the surprise ball and it took a few jelly beans and m&m dropping onto the table and floor before she realized what was happening! Surprise! I think it worked. Now, if I can only get the ball to look smoother, smaller and not be so annoying to produce I'll be on my way!

Claresa's Fairy Treasure Stones WS

Claresa's Fairy Treasure Stones

Before bed: Place the stone in a glass. Sprinkle in the "Most Magical Fairy Dust"......

Pour in the water and go to sleep.....

In the morning, stir the stone , it will crumble toreveal it's treasure!*

SmartFairy.com

I have been to some great websites trying to figure out how to make stuff. The best one I've found was Not Martha.org. Her site inspired me to start SmartFairy.com for a number of reasons. Whenever I try out something new, I have a tendency to not get all the materials together at once and therefore have a harder time creating whatever "it" is.

For instance, I decided I wanted to make a pomander and put a fairy spin on it. I had the oranges, but didn't have the cloves. It was a week before Christmas (I know, shouldn't I have been doing something more worthwhile than making a pomander) and all of the inexpensive cloves were sold out - at Walmart no less. I guess there were a lot of people in Loveland making pomanders that Christmas when they should've been doing something else! The only cloves they had left were $7.39 a bottle!

Anyway, I got down to business and began my pomander, the instructions I had were illustrations. Not always a bad way to go as far as instructions go, but these were not the best - I like photos - good ones like they do in the DK books.

To make a long story short (thank goodness) the pomander looked decent, but I wasn't sure if my rows were the right spacing apart and I really didn't know what the end result was supposed to be. I apprehensively put the pomander into a brown bag and placed it on a shelf in the furnace room. And then, of course, forgot about it. Not completely, I would remember every other week, but forget to follow through on that memory and retrieve it from downstairs. Really, how often does one wander past or enter into the furnace room?

I did manage to bring it upstairs last week. All I can say is that looks aren't everything to a homemade pomander. It smelled gorgeous though! Now that brings me to the reason for the SmartFairy.com website. I really would liked to have know ahead of time that the fairy pomander was not going to be particularly attractive, but worth making one, they are fun and they do smell great.

You can visit my "Pomander" page here at:

http://smartfairy.com/Craft/Fairycraftshome/fairypomander.html

Help! My son is suffering from the terrible elevenses!

My son, we'll call him Jack, is suffering from the terrible elevenses and, therefore, causing those responsible for him to suffer as well.

What do I mean by the terrible elevenses?

If you must ask this, obviously your children are 10 and under, female or you are happily childless. Terrible elevenses become obvious to we parents around the entrance of 6th grade or as it is here MIDDLE SCHOOL. For me it was Junior High, terrible elevenses were actually 12 and they were known as just plain puberty. But, because of MIDDLE SCHOOL, we have a new syndrome.

Now, the terrible elevenses (TE) it doesn't take full terribleness (making up words today) until about 6 weeks in. That is the innocent time where they are scared to be in a new huge school and are not feeling like 6th graders, but kindergartners.

Unfortunately, as children have a tendency to do, they adjust to this new enormous school and think they are not eleven year old 6th graders, but "MIDDLE SCHOOLERS".

With being a "MIDDLE SCHOOLER" or MS, that means I have become stupid and everything (even hard boiled eggs) must be argued against.

Second Bit - Off on an Emotional Tangent

My son is learning about sex, drugs, the Ku Klux Klan, global warming and the holocaust....but, isn't he just 11? Isn't he just a 6th grader?

As I am writing this, I am feeling that awful feeling of panic that comes when your children start to grow into a new phase. That feeling that you are actually letting them go down the slide by themselves, or walk to school alone.

This is my second child to experience this, I don't like it one bit! I want him to grow up and be a man, independent and safe. But today I really just want him to sit on my knee so I can read him a story.

Banana Hat Girl

Something new to do with those brown speckeled bananas!

Face Painting for Pics

I have a friend who runs a daycare from her home. When I first started out face painting I would give her a call and request to face paint her kids to take photos and get practice. Now she is calling me, which is nice.

So today I painted her kids and it was great! I've attached the new photos.

I originally thought I would use the afternoon to paint some new Christmas faces, and then at the last minute changed my mind and decided to re-paint some old designs. Some of the photos I have are three years old from when I first started. Although, the old photos aren't bad, I've improved so dramatically they hardly resemble the original photo. That leads to all sorts of scrutiny by some children, usually the child with too much time on their hands in line or something.

They look into the mirror and point out how there isn't white here or a swirl there. They whisper and consult their friends or sibling. Hardly any of them dare actually say anything directly to me..but I am amused listening in. I can be amused because I feel confident the face is better than the photo.

I do "warn" or "inform" the children that the face my be slightly different because I've improved, which satisfies 99% of them.

Sometimes being a face painter feels a lot like being a social scientist! Most of the time my job cannot get any more satisfying!

Claresa the Fairy - 15 Seconds of Fame

Last Thursday, I emailed my website info to E.D. Hill at Fox News. She had requested "American Made Toy" sites last August and I finally remembered to do it!

After she announced my website name birthdayfairies.com and said it had some great stuff on it, my website had over 500 hits! Now that may not seem alot to some people, but to fairies it was huge!

It was fairy central here. I really did feel like a Christmas Elf making toys! I even got my 5 year old to help with assembly line treasure stone production, and she is about the size of an elf. I was sick with a throat thing, the top floor looked like a Christmas bomb had exploded and the downstairs looked like, well, Santa's Workshop or Claresa's as the case my be. What a weekend!

The excitement is over now, I am receiving more hits and more orders, but nothing like last Thursday. I am still listed on E.D. Hill's list of safe American Made Toys on the Fox News website.