​This is the Reindeer Muse,  the Queen's own poet. Every day, she alights to a sunny spot to collect the sun and her thoughts for a new verse she'll take back to the Queen and court for the evening.

This one-of-a-kind miniature fairy dress is made from birch bark and reindeer moss the color of toasted marshmallow.

She is adorned with a sash of pale green curly leaf and an applique of pale lichen and a bit of fluff.

And the bodice is stitched up the back with moss colored thread.

Another fall fairy made from red and brown leaves.

Cut along the midrib, the veins of the leaf patterns fit together like a pattern with the blade as the neckline.

I love the way the red and brown intersect and how the "wings" came out.

Each piece is one of a kind and comes with a custom fairy hanger.

The fall fairies are here, adorned in dried leaf with "wings."

She is known as the "fuin" fairy, a symbol of the end.

It is the end of summer, the end of natural light, the beginning of winter's time.  The commencement of the dark half of the world.

Her bodice has been made from grasses that were once part of the Green World, but now have dried and withered.

Her adornment is from the petal of a hydrangea bush that has turned purple with the fall cold and a curled dried leaf.

Her skirt is made from the dried bulb of Queen Anne's Lace, brambles and the white fluff of plants gone to seed.

She is a symbol to honor the change of the cold and dying season. It is also the season of renewal for all of the plants that have died and decayed nourish the Earth for May's growing season.

After the Hunter's Moon this past week, I knew something was up.  Oh that's right....me. I was up....with insomnia all week.

But I should have known....the Wee Folk were up to something as well. Look very closely at the middle of the dead tree. See it?

I should have known something was up because we are now three days before Samhain, one of the most powerful times of the Others. I'd already found evidence that a feis (a feast) was being assembled when I'd found a throne built for the Fairy Queen. Then I discovered this one in the hollow.

My breath caught. I flipped back to the pages of my field notebook. At one point in time, the ritual of Samhain consisted of the symbolic sacrifice of the King. My fairy troop I've been following in the coastal woods of Maine for the past two years are all female, matriarch-led. So, what was this?

This was a masculine throne with a tufted mossy cushion and a Pentagram. And then, it made sense. In Ireland and western Scotland, the practice of Samhain and Hallowe'en allows people to dress in completely nonsensical, upside down ways. It's also when dead members of the clan are invited back to their old raths, to be entertained, fed, and given gifts.

Could this mean, that the new throne built was secretly for the Queen? Was she planning to reverse her robes and play a trick on Samhain in jest as her Hunters and Gathers lay apples and Hazelnuts for their celebratory fais? Was it a tribute to the Kings and Overlords, Gods and Goddesses? Or was this truly a plot to invite a provincial King to this particular rath three days before Samhain and perform a sacrifice?

This wee door was found in the cleft of a mossy tree.

People think, "Oh cute, a fairy door," but have no concept of its true power. A door to the Otherworld is a very serious thing and not something a human should blithely choose to open.

Before one's hand grasps that little grapevine knob and pushes it open to the deep cleft below, know this: when the Sidhe or the "Wee Folk" construct a door such as this, it is meant only for their kind. It is a portal from The Green World, (the one in which the physical living walk around in) to the Underworld (where the Wee Folk were forced many centuries ago to retreat) but it is also a passage to the Otherworld, an ancient place were the Irish Celts proclaim the dead walk among the living in perfect harmony.

Unless you want to make your choice right here and now about what world you choose to live in, I don't suggest you do anything but admire this door from afar.  For if you walk through, the door may close permanently behind you.
Photos and creation by Kay Stephens

Brambles in Belfast is the perfect place for our fairy dresses, which have all been staged hanging off willow branches and anchored by their beautiful stone vases. We've already sold quite a few and they going fast.

Next time you are in Belfast, check them out at 2 Cross Street.

Here is a lovely shot of their exterior by Arline Smart Lamarche

 Here is a rare glimpse of a Dryad, a shape shifting fairy that can take the form of a tree. These are the Watchers of the Forest, and since the Sidhe rely on the cover of the woods to keep their troops hidden and safe, the Dryads are not to be trifled with. They are not well-disposed to humans given Mankind's abuse of the earth and its resources.

They play a tricks on tree cutters, distracting them away from their tasks. If a lumberjack should cut down a tree in Sidhe territory,  it is said in folklore the Dryad will shape shift  into a woman and then disappear into tree form when the man give chase. There,  alone in the wilderness and cut off, he will meet his fate.

I made this one specifically from an image in my mind after hiking in Rangeley. I'd seen these brilliant greens striations on  this kind of stump (I have to link to it because I don't have permission to post it). So, I set out to paint the birch bodice with the same kinds of kelly and dark greens.

The neckline of the bodice is adorned with moss I'd picked from dead stumps in the forest (never from a live tree) and a closed bud of green and white.

The upper part of the skirt is adorned with Lobaria pulmonaria, a lichen known as "lung moss"  thought to be a medicinal remedy for lung diseases. The underskirt is made from green reindeer moss with tufts of Old Man's Beard.

This one-of-a-kind fairy dress now lives at Brambles, in Belfast. Be sure to go see their display of all my fairy dresses.

Another spotting of a sweet beach rose fairy as summer turns to fall.

Her underskirt is perfumed by the rose petals gathered by the sea and the adornments are dried bramble and flowers; she is the sweetest smelling fairy, long after the flowers have gone by. She is a close ally to the Merrow, the sea fairies who communicate with their counterparts on land. 

More details up close.

Her bodice is stitched up the back with hot pink thread. Find out more on how to win a Wee Folk fairy through our Instagram page!

While the human world is preoccupied with mid-September mundane thoughts such as:  "Time to go back to school; time to get the wood delivery for the winter; time to uproot the garden and fix the driveway before the first frost heaves," the Wee Folk are in their autumnal rejoicing mode. In time for Alban Elved, the Autumnal Equinox, the troop I've been observing for more than two years now,  built their queen a majestic throne.

The throne is typical of their elemental architecture. It is constructed with the seat of a mossy alder, the back built like a destroyed spider web with a woven Pentagram for the Queen's protection. As she is the balance between light and dark at this time of year, she is vulnerable to the lower realms and the throne is her seat of safety.

​She is the Queen of the Harvest, the giver of prosperity. And all summer, the troop has been hunting and gathering vole, elvers, fish, berries, chokecherries, honey, and acorn bread, and storing it away for their Winter Underground. The Full Corn Moon is coming up and they will be rejoicing all week with feasts and laughter, joy and dancing.

Apart from the mossy and lichen-covered limbs, the throne was built as a tribute to the Queen's loveliness with touches of dried yellow flowers to reflect her own golden hair and curlicues of grape vine to symbolize the change of the grape as it turns to wine when she lifts up her chalice each night to ask the Ancient Ones to bless her troop for another winter season.