Between the berries and the preserving, foraging for craft materials is honestly my favorite part of summer. It’s the quiet-hour version of foraging — no rush, no ripening window to beat, just wandering with a bag and an eye for what’s usable. It also does real work for the homestead’s bottom line: every stone, twig, and strip of bark I gather is one less thing I’m buying from a craft store.
(I’ll be dropping in photos of the actual collecting and creating as I go — bear with me if the copy shifts around them.)
Smooth Stones: Tic-Tac-Toe Sets and Garden Markers
Riverbeds and lake shores are where I do most of my stone hunting, and I’m looking for two different things depending on size.
Small, flat, smooth stones become tic-tac-toe markers — nine of one shape, nine of another, or I’ll paint an X on one set and an O on the other with outdoor paint. They’re one of the simplest things I make and consistently one of the most popular at markets, because everyone recognizes what they’re looking at instantly.
Slightly larger, flatter stones get turned into garden markers — a coat of chalk paint, a plant name in paint pen, and they hold up outdoors far better than the plastic tags that come with nursery starts. This is also just genuinely useful for my own garden beds, not just a thing I sell.
The trick with stones is patience more than skill — you’re sorting through a lot of rejects for every one that’s the right size, shape, and smoothness.
Twigs and Small Stones: Fairy House Fire Pits
This one’s close to my heart. Small twigs stacked teepee-style, ringed with tiny stones, make a miniature fire pit that’s a staple in every fairy house I build. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of thing that makes a fairy house feel lived-in rather than staged.
I love this enough that I’ve started putting together foraged fairy house kits to pair with my book, Growing Up As Fairies — a little bundle of the twigs, stones, bark, and moss someone needs to build their own scene at home, without having to go hunt down every piece themselves. If you’ve read the book, you know how much of it lives in these tiny outdoor details, and being able to hand someone the raw materials to build their own version of that world has been one of my favorite things to come out of this whole hobby.
Birch Bark and Dry Lichen: Ornaments
Birch bark peels naturally off downed limbs and fallen trees — I never take it from a living, standing tree, since that can seriously injure it. A downed limb after a storm is usually all I need for an entire season’s worth of ornament material.
Layered with dry lichen (found on the same downed wood, or on rocks and old fence posts), birch bark makes surprisingly elegant ornaments — a punched shape, a bit of twine, a scrap of lichen tucked in for texture. They lean rustic in a way that fits a homestead aesthetic without trying too hard to look “curated.”
Grapevine: Wreath Bases
Wild grapevine is everywhere if you know where to look — fence lines, the edges of wooded areas, anywhere it’s had something to climb. I harvest it while it’s still pliable, coil it into a loose wreath shape while fresh, and let it dry in that shape so it holds without cracking.
One healthy vine can make several wreath bases, and unlike store-bought grapevine wreaths, foraged ones tend to have more natural character — little offshoots and curls that a machine-made version won’t have.
Twigs: Frames and Coasters
Straight, similarly-sized twigs get glued into simple square or rectangular frames, or bundled and sliced into coaster sets. It’s a low-skill, high-output project — the kind of thing I can do in an evening while half-watching something on TV, and it uses up the smaller pieces that aren’t quite right for the fairy house fire pits.
The Sustainable Harvesting Rules I Actually Follow
I said this in the original foraging post and it’s worth repeating here, because craft foraging has its own version of the same temptation:
- Never strip bark from a living tree. Downed wood only — a tree can die from having its bark removed while alive.
- Take a portion, not the patch. If I find a great stand of grapevine or a good lichen-covered log, I take what I need and leave plenty behind.
- Leave the roots and growing points intact. Especially with vines — cutting rather than uprooting means it can regrow next season.
- Respect property lines and permission. Public land rules vary, and private land always needs to be asked about first.
What’s Available When
A rough month-by-month cheat sheet, at least for my region — yours may shift depending on climate:
- Early summer: Fresh grapevine at its most pliable, first fallen limbs after spring storms
- Midsummer: Stones are easiest to spot along lower summer water levels, lichen is abundant on dry logs
- Late summer: Birch bark from any additional storm-downed limbs, twigs at their straightest before fall growth gets brittle
I’ll be updating this post with photos as I go through this season’s collecting and crafting — and if you’ve made your own fairy house fire pit or grapevine wreath, I’d love to see it in the comments.
