The Fairy Queen

Do you remember Dawn, my little Topper doll? After having her lying around without clothes for years because 1. I didn't even know back then what or who she was, 2. I had no idea where to get clothes for her, I had finally made a fancy little dress and accessories for her out of seed beads.
As Dawn is only 6 1/2 inch - compared to the 11 1/2 inch of a Barbie and 11 1/4 inch of a Francie - it may not be instant gratification to make something for her, but it's definitely quicker. I couldn't help myself and had to get more Topper dolls, two more, to be exact.
After making the dragonfly pin, I knew what I wanted to do with one of them.
Dawn was to become a fairy!
Only she's not really Dawn, but one of her friends as the head mark 11C as opposed to 11A told me. She's Jessica who used to be a stewardess (yes, that's what it was called back then). It's kind of funny because last time I had thought that Dawn was a Jessica, and now I fell for it the other way round. I should have noticed that her hair was not as full, but I'm so used to different Bubble Cut hairstyles on vintage Barbies that I simply didn't think about it.

As usually, I made the dress first.
What do you think of when thinking of a fairy? Tinkerbelle? Flora, Fauna and Merry-weather from Sleeping Beauty? Cinderella's fairy godmother? Oh, no Disney fairy at all? Maybe one from a fairy tale book you read as a child? From a fantasy movie?
Do you imagine a long dress, a colorful hat that reminds of a witch's hat? Something short and green? A cloak with a big bow? Something glittery? Something colorful like flowers? That's the fun part about it, your imagination is the limit.
My imagination sent me to a combination of reds and browns with some gold mixed in. I made the dress using the Herringbone technique which has proven to be the most versatile so far, at least for me who's not that much of an off loom beader (yet?). I like the "pleats" in the skirt and hope to be able to reproduce this in a bigger dress eventually.
This time I forgot to take a picture of Jessica just with the dress on, but I'll get to the accessories again later.

Next were the wings. It's two sets of wings which I made in the bead embroidery technique with golden seed and bugle beads. Instead of enhancing the golden look as I did in the dragonfly wings, I used tiny clear AB seed beads with the sequins here.
Sewing the wings on was quite a fiddly thing to do, especially with the arms constantly getting in the way. The hard part was also to sew them on in a way that wouldn't make them move too much, after all I don't want them to fold up in the back, so you won't be able to see them.
I would say this part challenged my patience the most, and yes, there was swearing!
Here's a close-up of the wings.

My first thought had been to give my fairy a wand, but the typical wand with the little star on top seemed a little stereotypical. Instead, I decided on giving her a long staff, something sturdy, something to emphasize her power as a queen even more than the little golden crown of seed beads and coated hematite.
After thinking for a while, I remembered having wood skewers left over from my polymer clay days. I used size 15 seed beads to cover one of them in peyote, going from coated clear beads at the bottom to golden ones at the top.
The Swarovski crystal came in very handy although the story goes that it's really a citrine found by the dwarves and gifted to the Queen of the Fairies ;-) I could have used the same one in a smaller size, but the Queen made very clear that she didn't think small.
For the connection between staff and crystal I glued on a thick layer of golden seed beads to strengthen the thread connection. It was one of the rare times when glue and I made up a good team!
The staff is attached to the hand by means of a little bracelet and I can even move it into different directions without it falling off.

Last but not least came the everlasting struggle with the shoes. As I had already mentioned in my post about Dawn, the Topper dolls have tiny feet thanks to their size. Once again I tried slippers like I made them for Francie before, I tried to make the soles in different sizes and use differently sized beads, but to no avail. Even when I admitted defeat and got back to the sandal design, I still had to experiment with that.
This is attempt #6, I think, the one that finally made me happy. They stay on her feet and they fit the outfit. I didn't have a golden thread, but I have a gold metallic pen coming to cover it and even like this the "golden yellow" was still the best choice.

Thank you if you have made it to here. I'll end this post with a picture that is giving you a better idea of the Queen's size. This is an ordinary step on my stairs, so you see that our fairy is indeed one of the "small folk".
Don't let it deceive you, though, I'm sure she knows how to use that staff, for magic or to hit you with it! ;-)

Dawn was a registered trademark of the Topper Company. I am also not affiliated with Topper in any way.

The Fairy Mouse

I'm still here although I took a longer break due to personal reasons. I haven't been lazy, but you will see more about that in December for a new advent calendar of mine.

The wire had become a pretty rare guest in my creative world lately, but the other day I was determined to step away from the beads and bring the wire back. As usual I didn't have a plan, all I had were four short strands of thicker wire and my working wire.
Let me tell you about the journey I took with them which led me to a peculiar creature.

It's strange how four strands of wire can be "bound" together with more wire, and then you look at them and you start seeing something - if you are lucky, that is, and your muse is playing along. As the length really wasn't enough for big experiments, it was only natural to bend the component or whatever you would have called it at that moment in the center.
One thing I saw was a little octopus like one I had made before. It was good to know I would have a plan B, even if I didn't have a plan A. I'm saying plan B because I didn't really want to make an octopus. I wanted to make .... an eye ... an eye with feathers ... did I have a cab I could use ... the faux amber, perfect size ... and the feathers on the end (please note that none of the steps went as quickly as described in this post, I held stuff up a lot and looked at it and put one thing on the other, unwove (is that even a word?) wire and so on, and never took one picture of the process because I couldn't disturb the muse, right?) ... and now I had an eye and the "amber" kept moving a little, so I had to get the wires in the back tighter ... shining through the cab now, not sure I like that, but I'll leave it for now ... next the feathers?

No worries, I won't go on like that, but I wanted to show that this is pretty much how the process of creating often works for me.
Before the feathers my eye fell on an agate slice. THE agate slice. I got it in an early Easter sale, shortly before the pandemic made me stay home. Don't ask what agates have to do with Easter, the hardware store kept them in a basket at the table with decorative items on sale. This particular slice had been out of the stash drawer several times, but had always refused talking to me. This time, however, it said "look at me, I'm a mouse". An eye with feathers and a green mouse. Weird. Leaves instead of feathers. Leaves, woods, a green mouse ... a fairy mouse!

That's when it all came together. My mouse needed a big ear, swirls and scrolls on her body, a long tail with swirls and even swirly whiskers.
When I finally held it against the light, I noticed that especially the lower wire behind the cab seemed to add more dimension and life to the eye.

It really is an odd little creature, but aren't we all? ;-)
Now it just needs a bail and/or chain if I decide to make it a pendant. It's not a lightweight. Maybe it would look nice in a shadow box with some kind of woodsy background?

Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop - Faerie

Will I ever learn? Don't even bother, I'll tell you. The answer is NO, NEIN, NON, NEE, NEJ (I could keep going, but you get the idea).
The worst thing about it is that I had a plan for the Art Elements Design Challenge and Blog Hop for which Caroline gave us the topic "Faerie" - which should have given me hundreds of ideas -, not at the beginning of the month, but last weekend. It came sudden and I didn't jump on it right away. Because I never do. Because I have to roll it around in my head first and let it grow on me.
That's how my brain works. It takes a very basic plan or vague idea and then it grabs bits and pieces out of the air and adds them to it or discards things again. Imagine a manikin. You put a basic dress on it and then you start adding a scarf, a belt, gloves, you don't like the scarf and take it off again, then the belt, then you add a shawl, maybe take the gloves off and add a bracelet instead - only my brain uses colors and shapes.
That sounds creative, doesn't it? Instead it's mostly chaos that finally spits out something, and if I'm lucky, it's something good - if not, it ends up behind the summer house like Mr Mo's poor plasticine wife (see "Mary Poppins in the Park", a book that I love very much), well, actually my infamous WIP drawers.

Unfortunately life got in the way over the last week. Work, a crafts class, and then I got sick which sucked up the last bit of motivation. Since Wednesday I have been thinking about opting out of the challenge, I even started writing the email once.
Instead I pulled myself together yesterday and ended up with a variation of my idea because, let's be honest, this was bound to go wrong at some point or at least stray from the original plan which had been a small fairy that I wanted to put on ... no, I'll keep that one to myself, it may still be happening, who knows.

Small, yes, as small as I wanted my fairy to be, no. The proportions had been slightly off, enough so to make me uncomfortable about it when I was looking at her, so I needed to add to the arms and legs which meant I needed to add to the head and body.
I don't know yet if she's a WIP. Maybe she needs some wings after all although I don't think so at the moment. After all she could ride the ladybug, he may look a little small for her, but he's tough through and through (and reminds of the time when I dabbled in polymer clay). Or she could take the "Exotic Butterfly Airline" (I made that strange looking butterfly after I won that box of Twin Beads and ran out of ideas for them) ? ;-) 

 

Now let's see once again how much more organized our other blog hoppers were! :-D

Guests
 
Alison -  Alysen - Cat (aka me) - Divya - Hope - Kathy - Sarah - Tammy - Vic

AE Team Members
 
Caroline - Cathy -  Claire - Jen - Jenny - Laney - Marsha - Niky

Tackle that stash - Fairy flower

It's so late already that I honestly didn't think I would make it today.
Just for fun I grabbed some wire and a lampwork bead and started looking for my 1.4 mm crochet hook. I have no idea how that had ended up in the waste paper basket, but I'm sure glad I found it. I hope my beloved 1.65 mm hook that has disappeared didn't take the same way at a former point in time.

I'll make this short. My first effort went into the basket my crochet hook had just found its way out of and the lampwork bead wandered back into the drawer.
I started over planning to make a wire knit ring. As you can tell, that did not quite happen. Instead the flower that started taking shape called for a different lampwork bead, a bigger one, and decided to be a pendant reminding of a sweet pea (I always loved sweet peas) ... or maybe a fairy flower after all?

The Rainbow Fairies

The idea was born when I started sorting a small plastic bag of bead soup. I can't call myself a seed beader although I have used beads more than once, and little did I know when I decided to separate the bead soup into his ingredients. I didn't do it all in one day, it took a few days, but finally I had all those neat little plastic bags with one bead color each.
So now what?
I held the bags next to each other, thinking about possible color combinations and the next thing I knew was me throwing together seed beads. I guess I should have thought about that earlier, it would have saved me some time.
The first necklace was the blue and green of the ocean and there it was, the crazy idea of making many in different color combinations - the necklaces for the Rainbow Fairies.

The Rainbow Fairies have their club in a treehouse on the highest tree you can find. When joining each of them got their own special necklace in their own special colors as you can see in this picture. I'm sure they'll attract new members over the time.


And there are those last leftover seed beads in the bag that didn't match any of the other colors. How about a Fairy of Color? ;-)

They are already listed in my Zibbet shop by the way, but are supposed to move into my other shops as well soon.