Faery Crowns

  

Thought I'd share a bit of what I've been making lately with natural materials...
Recently, for the first time, I've tried my hand at faery crown making. Here are some photos of the first two crowns I made. They are available as custom orders on my Pandora Jane shop and I've sold several already! They are quite sturdy so they can actually be securely worn for faery festivals, Rennaissance fests, parties and creative weddings. The crowns also look quite nice displayed on a shelf or in a cabinet of collectibles.
Here is the first one I made:

Kindly modeled by my lovely daughter

The second crown was a request from a friend, who asked for something a little more compact and with a bit of her favourite colour included. (Yes, it can be annoying if one is always getting wings and crowns snarled up in the household furnishings or poking one's friends whilst giving a hug!) So this one is a bit smaller---12 centimeters across the base---and is made from twigs, seashells and soft pink flamingo feathers I picked up on one of my sojourns in the South of France.

For some time now I had contemplated making a fae sized gramophone record player, maybe because I am in love with the human size version and only wish they weren't so pricey. The idea of listening to all those scratchy old discs with no need for electricity seems perfect for a picnic in the country and some impromptu waltzing beneath the trees, togged up in lovely Edwardian style.

Then there was a faery kitchen table that emerged, all ready for tea-time. The chair has a lovely green, velvety wisteria pod as its back panel and a tiny walnut shell basket sits nearby.

And lastly a faery girl, all in natural materials at the request of one of my regular customers on Pandora Jane.

If you'd like to see more please stop by for a visit at my Pandora Jane shop on Etsy. There are lots and lots of different photos of fae items both for sale and under the archive of sold pieces, which you can click to view in the shop's sidebar. (To go to my shop from here just click on the blog's sidebar link to the right under "Diana's etsy shops"--for some reason I'm having trouble making a clickable link today).

The Seven Wonders in Fairyland

During the year 2007, when attention was focused on deciding a new version of the seven wonders of the world, I took part through the Applied Imagination atelier in planning and creating a themed installation for the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus, Ohio. It consisted of miniature versions of some of the candidates being considered, such as the Taj Mahal, a dollhouse scale interpretation (built on an approximately three x three foot base) I created with natural materials like twigs, gourds, dried leaves, pods and bark. After the buildings were finished, it was quite an interesting exhibition to install amid a winding, multilevel display of specimen plants, water features and steep rock formations spiraling upward to high glass ceilings. I spent many hours balanced barefoot on a narrow ledge some fifteen feet above the floor, installing the fairy scale Great Wall of China, secured with a hot glued surround of cork bark and moss to create the illusion that it had been built on this site several ages ago.

 

Great Wall of China (with Becca Stadtlander)

Great Wall (detail)

Taj Mahal

 

Petra, Jordan (studio view in progress)

  Great Sphinx of Giza (in progress)

Sphinx on Site

Machu Picchu (with Becca Stadtlander)

Great Stupa of Boudhanath, Nepal (detail)

Great Stupa (studio view)

To be continued....