Iridescent Shimmers

the belief of the unknown can be found within the flicker of eyelashes as they see the beauty of the dream. a dream where one begins to question the artistry of the imaginable.

searching for the mystery of colours that makes up a rainbows arc, the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis' as they dance across the sky or even with the wings of a dragonfly. a dragonfly found within the treasures of a mountains waterfall as it splashes down into an iridescent pool or within the treasures of a tumbling of water as it ripples with the glimmer of gold.

on the left - found in North America (Canada)
on the right - found in Asia (Korea)

Magic Always Trumps Facts and Fiction

the facts

a rainbow consists of a variety of colours that create a spectrum through reflection, refraction, dispersion and water droplets.  these documented studies have shown that with these 4 requirements there are numerous conditions that go in the designing of the prism like arc seen in the sky.  two of these studies include the sizing of tears which when larger generate vivid hues; and as with the horizon borderline reds/yellows can be seen and the range of blue/green pigments are found when higher in the sky.  

the fiction

folklore does tell us of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, so if you do happen to find yourself bathed within the crescent of unbelievable colours please do share your riches with me. 

the magic

but more importantly it is with your own eyes that you find the true beauty of a rainbow. 

* please note:

the bits and pieces of information provided above came from a variety of resources which were re-written only to fit this blog posting. 

The Great Separation Project!!

Well, after about 2 months of separating they are all done!

Once the decision was made to start the new line of Northern Faeries I started ordering flowers specifically for them. I think my first order went in the final week of November and I stopped ordering December 31, 2013. The last batch of flowers arrived on Tuesday, January 21, 2014 and they have now been taken apart as well.

A massive thank you goes out to Hubby, Ryan and Amanda (Noon) for all of their help.

In the end, there was 1545 flower heads in total that needed to be taken apart. Now being that I like things really taken apart, each flower is broken down by size and colour and placed into individual baggies. Yes...that is a LOT of baggies.

So keep in mind that all of these flowers are dedicated to the Northern Faerie Line. There are currently 6 that are available for sale and another 6 that are either completed or are in the process of designing.

I took pictures from all around the table and then from above!

That's a whole lot of flower petals!!

They were left alone....

Yes, I will take full blame for this one as I had to leave the nursery for a few days. But but but, in my own defence...I did make sure that Sapphire the Pixie lock the faerie dust cabinet so I knew that wouldn't be a problem....I asked Faerie Mia to look after all of the flower petals.....I asked Fae Bella to look after the beads....and I asked Pixie Jinx to look after the paint. I figured I had pretty well everything covered. NOPE! I had forgotten about the yarn buckets! At least they kept the mess centralized except for the odd ball or two that managed to roll off of the table. And yes, if you look close enough...that is me, Faerie Amma right in the middle!!

THE MESS

Ella the Sprite

Fae Bella

Benny the Buttery Sprite

Faerie Cabela

Faerie Nettle

Faerie Mia

Mouse the Ashray Faerie

Nipper the Clurichaun

Missy May of the Moss People 

Pixie Grace

Pixie Bess

Pixie Ivy

Pixie Jinx

Ros of the Moss People 

Sprite Enwedhan

Pixie Sunburst

Sprite SugarPlum

Pixie Heather

Sapphire the Pixie 

Faerie Amma

The Clay Potters??

Who are The Clay Potters?

Why, YOU and I are The Clay Potters!!

My brand new line of standing-up faeries will now become The Clay Potters.

Everyone who wants to join is welcome, mind you the Faeries do insist on me telling you that there are a few simple things you must do firstly.

1. Chose a name...that sounds simple enough to me. Perhaps a favourite nickname from when you were little? Perhaps your pets name? Perhaps you just love your own name and you want to use that! The main reason behind choosing a new name is so that I (and the Faeries) can address you without any worries of sharing too much personal information here on the world wide web.

2. Decide who you are...this one is a bit tougher but I found a wonderful guide that you can use Faerie Groups (a massive thank you to the designer Kelley Heckart). So look at who you feel you are or want to be.

3. Let the Faeries know your top 3 favourite colours.

4. We need to know at least 2 of your favourite things to do. Maybe you are a knitter, a hockey fan, an archer, a baker...the list is endless.

5. Send us an e-mail to: faerie.nursery@theenchantedpathways.com

With all of this wonderful information, I, Faerie Amma will make you a Faerie (female/male). This new Clay Potter faerie will stay here in the nursery with the other faeries as a chance for us to get to know them.

There will be brief updates on Facebook and Twitter. The Website will host all of the photos and news updates. The main story line will be told here on the Blog.

Oops...did I say 'story line'? Well the whole point of letting The Clay Potters get into mischief and mayhem is for me to start a faerie tale book. I will record what is happening here in the nursery and share it here with you....as YOU are the characters.

If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions for The Clay Potters or for me please do not keep them to yourself as I will need all the help I can get.

I look forward to creating The Clay Potters and for you get to know them too.

Faerie Amma

New Babies Have Arrived, Well Kinda...

After finally putting my Faerie Seed Pod Babies listing up on my Etsy store front I decided that I really didn't have that much of section to chose from.

So, I went back to main supplier of rose flower heads and was trying to decide what colours to order. They have such a wonderful selection of multicoloured and single toned flowers to choose from it's amazing.

In the end after almost placing my order for 4 packages of 25 each, I found after scrolling to the VERY bottom of the page, that they offered 2 types of mixed packages. Woo Hoo!! Mind you, each package came with 100 rose heads and that's a whole lot of babies that would have to be made and SOLD. The two types that they offered were of course the single toned and then the multicoloured ones. After thinking about it for what...maybe a whole 2 minutes, I purchased both.

I ended up with only 1 of the original 4 kinds that I was going to order but I love my selection now.

A Sneak Preview

As I have mentioned before, my teacup nurseries are coming along quite well. I am very happy with them and enjoying experimenting with all of the new and interesting shapes.

Each teacup nursery will come of course with a flower petal faerie. I have decided to make each of these faeries match the colours of the teacups. Thought that it would be quite complementary and tie in nicely.

As my graphic designer is waiting NOT so patiently for the photos of the teacup nurseries for the magazine ad, I figured it was about time I actually get some faeries made.

Here is a sneak peak at what I managed to do this evening. Now just remember, this is only a peak!

And yes, the faeries are tipped upside down drying in their respective teacups :)

Push Pins Anyone??

You know how you go into a store with great expectations and then all you find is plain, boring, everyone else has kind of stuff?

Well...here is my story for the day!

Figured I might need a cork board for the nursery. You know...with this whole aging thing, my mind is definitely not as sharp (get it...push pins...sharp!! Okay, maybe it was just me that giggled at this one??) as it used to be.

So, now I have a cork board. Even managed to find a great spot for it. Hung it up. Looking pretty good.

Now, what does a cork board need. It needs little pieces of paper that are hung up with push pins. Off I went to find push pins, but being me....ordinary push pins we know just won't do. In the store, I managed to find the back wall that has all the push pins on display. Can you say ... DISAPPOINTED! Not one package of cool looking push pins. All I found was the ugly prime coloured ones (not saying that these don't fit the colour scheme of other folks....just not me). Went and got the catalogue...nope...just plain old dull blue, red and yellow. Now tell me, how boring is that??

Back here at home...time to do an internet search for fun, exciting and cool push pins. Whoa.....have you priced out fun, exciting and cool push pins?? Huh, huh, huh?? Hmmmm, so obviously that was an easy decision, the nursery was NOT going to be getting any fun, exciting and cool push pins.

Back to the drawing board. Now if you have been following my blog for a while now, you will recall that last year, I kind of went on a button buying spree. Not any type of button but real wooden buttons. Now with the joy of Ebay (and I do type that with a smile on my face), I was able to find buttons. Off to the bidding part but I am a firm believer that if anything goes over my maximum bid of $2.31 it wasn't meant to be mine. Over 1800 wooden buttons later.... :)

Now here comes in the ingenious part....yeah....I know....you already figured this part out!

Now I have fun, exciting and cool push pins for the nursery :)

And Who Doesn't Love SPARKLES???

Tomorrow is Art in the Park and as a last minute decision I decided I would like to do a tree display for the faeries. 

Now normally, well I have only ever done Christmas craft fairs before, I have used pine tree branches with moss at the base. Mind you this display is used for the complete Faerie Suite that includes the magical wooden door, trinket chest and a flower petal faerie. Everything is tucked in nicely to create a wonderful mystical scene with mushrooms and rabbits and faeries in the trees.

But as this is a summer fair, I thought maybe using just branches that are sparkled to hold the faeries. So over the weekend I just happened upon one of those light-up branch Christmas trees. You know the ones, just bare branches, no leaves. Well the picture on the box made it look like it was rounded and filled out and just perfect to hide little faeries in. After taking it out of the box....well lets just say it was silver branches all right, but they were all tied together flatly. There was no dimension, no nothing, just flatness!

Really need creativity here. The craft fair set-up is tomorrow morning. I don't want another Christmas scene and anyways, my table is only going to be about 3 feet long. Not nearly enough room to show a complete Faerie Suite. So what to do. Don't want to show off my Teacup Nurseries just yet. What does that leave me. The Seed Pod Faerie Babies...but but but. Nah. I am only going to take my faeries. 

So, off I went after work...need spray paint and sparkles...oh yeah and branches! 

I was lucky enough to have Georgina come over who really should go into interior design. No, really, she should! Wow. She did a fantastic job of the whole tree. She make little spaces for the faeries to sit in and everything. Plus she seems quite at home wearing sparkles :)

I will take more pictures tomorrow once everything is set up at the venue. As I am unsure if I will have access to an electrical outlet, the tree looks just fine without all the blue shiny lights. 

Wish me luck :)    

And thank you again Georgina :)

Georgina having fun ;)

Sparkles :)

Sparkles, Spray Glue and Rubber Gloves..hmmmm

 Fionn making sure we are doing things right!!

sparkly leaves

with lights

without lights

Rainbow Chests

I had a few trinket chests that I decided needed to be completed over the last few days. Once you take apart all of the tiniest little screws that I have EVER had to work with and then make sure that you don't mix up all the hardware with the chest that it came to....the fun begins. Usually I make sure that all of the paints go hand-in-hand and are coordinated in their rightful colour schemes. This time....well, lets just say that I kind of went off kilter!! As I only use environmentally safe paints (everything is water-based, even the Varathane!!) it is easy for me to paint in the workshop with little ventilation required. Plus, using water-based paints make the drying time feel like a snap! I decided this time to start with the outsides of the boxes, not sure why...just did. All my colours are usually dark and jewel-toned for the exterior just to make sure that there is great coverage and the different shades of the wood don't show through. The insides are a bit easier as they are usually filled with little trinkets. Don't worry though, they still get the exact same treatment as the exterior does, having two coats of colour and then 2 coats of Varathane. The only difference is that the interior gets the matte finish of the Varathane and as I love shiny and sparkly things....the outside gets the full gloss :)  While painting away, I was looking at all of the other colours I had on the shelf and things just started to fall into place. So now I ended up with a rainbow of trinket chests.

Even better then all of the above!! I sent my daughter on a shopping spree (as she actually lives in civilization where there are stores!!) and asked her to pick me up 20 more bottles of paint. So off she went...with two kids in tow. I get a call the next day saying that my granddaughter Rebecca was allowed to pick all the colours of paint for me. Now you have to picture this...we all know that paints are arranged on shelves that are closest to the floor correct? Well my granddaughter will be two in September and she was allowed to just pick whatever colours she wanted. How special is that :)  I may not even want to use any of the paints now as I will want to treasure them forever. I figure that once my 'care package' arrives I will actually label each bottle and say 'hand picked by Rebecca'. As I use each colour the memories of knowing who picked it will flow through me and make me smile. I will even save the bottles so I can show her when she is older that she helped her Amma Emm :)

Twins!!

The nursery has been blessed with a set of twin petal faerie babies. There are now 12 extra little faeries that need to be taken care of by the Enchanted Pathways Faerie Nursery staff.

Sure hope the adoption papers get here soon so the little faeries can be placed into loving homes.