Barbara Umland’s Fairy House Workshop

Barbara Umland has been a lifelong artist and lover of art. She is a fine and mixed media artist. In 2020, with the advent of the Covid virus that shut down the world, she turned toward the natural world of nature in which she lives.

Barbara transforms unfinished wood bird houses into charming, elegant, and complex fairy houses. She uses materials from nature such as wood bark, lichen, moss, twigs, pieces of lichen covered branches, pine cone scales, little bare cones (after squirrels have had their way), feathers, dried flowers and grasses. Glue guns and glue sticks are also furnished.

Fairies, as you might know, are drawn to bright and glittery objects and may even steal them to embellish their own deep-in the-forest dwellings! They may use beads, single earrings, broken jewelry, colored glass, broken pottery, or anything that catches their eye!

Her fairy houses are sold and on display at Moon Lake Trading Company in Mentone, Alabama. She has also presented workshops at the Mentone Art Center and St. Joseph’s-on-the-Mountain parish hall.

A creative and fun time for all was had at the Fairy House workshop by Barbara Umland (left) held at St. Joseph’s-on-the-Mountain parish hall in August. Lesa Cummings (top center) invited friends from Anniston to attend. Robin Corbin created a tableau with the addition of greenery, rocks, a fantasy tree, and a tiny stone pathway. Each fairy house was unique and personalized with shiny trinkets, including a tiny fairy tale book as well as a tiny cross over the entrance.