I don't know how it happened, but my oldest just lost her first tooth, and it caught us both by surprise! When she started asking questions about the tooth fairy, I started scrambling. ;) I didn't want to deal with the extraction logistics of something that went under her pillow, so I thought that a little tooth fairy doll next to her bed could be a good variation. Here's what I made with materials I had on hand!

I started with a basic peg doll, and painted the body blue. This was when I was thinking that I could make a gender-neutral one that could eventually work for my son as well...and before the girls got involved with color requests. :)

I let them pick out a handful of colors of embroidery thread, which I then cut into three sections. I kept them fairly long, since I planned to cut them to a uniform length after attaching them to the doll.

Here's how she looks with her hair! I used a hot glue gun and glued the lengths of thread on diagonally, and overlapped them to try to give it some shape.

Next I raided my ribbon stash, and found some sheer, sparkly ribbon that I cut into these vaguely-petal shapes. I glued these onto the body as a skirt, overlapping them and letting them flare out at the bottom. And I found a glittery white ribbon that worked perfectly as wings - the ribbon that has wire in it to hold its shape works best for this!

The girls are requesting a whole family of fairies now, so I might add some tooth paraphernalia to tell this one apart! It would also be cute to attach it to a tiny box with a lid, so the tooth and surprise could be switched out. It was such a fun and easy project that we might set up a whole dental practice. :)