meet creative arts workshop instructor saoirse mcgurrin

Saorise McGurrin will be your guide during this special workshop on The Making of an Enchanted Fairy House. November 23 at the Greenhouse, Four Seasos Hotel, Westlake Village.

Meet Saorise

My fascination with fairy houses began when I was just a little girl with a fairy garden, exchanging letters with my garden fairies until they “moved to Alaska” when I turned eleven. In college, my friend Simone and I brought that childhood wonder back, crafting miniature fairy versions of buildings at Sarah Lawrence and secretly leaving them around campus for others to discover. It was a playful, magical secret we cherished. After college, I continued making fairy homes, using natural materials like birch bark, seed pods, and dried leaves found on hikes, crafting these little worlds as gifts for friends.

The idea for The Fairy Place was born during the writer's strike, a time when I found myself with ample space to dream up creative ideas. I wanted to make fairy house kits that others could build and customize, focusing on the magic of decoration and personalization. With the help of a local woodworker and a toy company specializing in hand-carved branch miniatures, I curated every element of the kit—from birchwood house pieces to tiny cranberry-colored rugs and a cardinal perched in her nest.

My favorite feature? The door—it opens! It's a small detail, but it adds a touch of wonder and invitation into the fairy world.

In my workshop, The Making of an Enchanted Fairy House, students will dive into their creativity, building their own miniature homes and designing them with natural materials. It’s an opportunity to reconnect with nature, imagination, and that spark of magic we often lose as adults. I hope participants will leave inspired, having built a fairy house that reflects their own creativity, while honoring the unseen but deeply felt magic in the world around us.