The Queen's Handmaiden These two fall beauties now have a home at H&H Mercantile. If you didn't already know, The Wee Folk's Queen depends on these helpers, choosing them for their beauty, so they may assist in brushing her hair, carrying her silken spider web train of her gown, or sitting with her and playing music to while away the afternoons.   Made from birch bark and blue hydrangea growing on my property, this is a gorgeous, colorful reminder that fall produces the best hues in Maine. As most of my Queen's Handmaidens are a toasty, fawn color, this rare blue beauty is one of a kind. I won't make another until next summer. The Cranberry Fairy  This pretty one is made from paper birch and Highbush cranberry. She is an attractor of wildlife and pollinators, her dress serving as host plants to numerous butterflies and moths. Her role in the rath is to dance and sing when Spring comes alive.  The Cranberry Fairy has been hiding out all winter underground and at the forest edge.  Her dress is made from paper birch and Highbush cranberry. She is an attractor of wildlife and pollinators, her dress serving as host plants to numerous butterflies and moths. Her role in the rath is to dance and sing when Spring comes alive.  Her corsage is made from a dried floret.  Detail on her sash includes tiny dried flowers and florets.  Stitched up the back with brown thread to match the toasty color of her birch bodice, The Cranberry Fairy is one of The Wee Folk's prettier lasses.
Protectress in war and peace; goddess of war and death. This fairy is the leader of the Sentinels, and a consort to the Queen fairy. She is consulted in all matters relating to a disturbance or invasion of the rath.     She hides with the crows in the trees, camouflaged by her dried grass bodice and miscanthus feathery grass skirt. The sash is a dessicated leaf. Her wings are from dried birch. Stitched up through the back.   This unusually warm weather we're having in Maine in November is keeping the Wee Folk above ground longer than usual. Here's one spotted taking a rest.  She's made of dried grasses for the bodice with a slightly green hue from the decay.  Her skirt and wings are from beech leaves. Her sash is from dried yellow fern with an applique of bittersweet.       The Forest Fairy will be for sale ($20) when our Etsy shop reopens for the virtual craft fair on November 21.
The Fuin Fairy comes out this time of year. (Fuin: the ancient word for "the end.") She is a symbol of the end of summer and the beginning of fall; the end of natural light, the beginning of winter's time. The commencement of the dark half of the world.  The Irish divided the year into two parts—Summer from the 1st of May until the 1st of November, and Winter from 1st November to the 1st of May.  She is a mystical fairy who embraces the darker world, a force of calm within a season of anxiety.  She's made from bands of both white and red birch bark, very powerful. With a corsage of bygone summer wildflowers.  Her skirts are made from the candied colors of autumn leaves: purples, browns, burgundies.  If you see her in the woods this time of year, leave her be.
Three days before Samhain, and my insomnia was growing worse every night, for a Blue Moon was getting fuller and fuller. Even the air felt super charged.  After hearing coyotes screech and howl last night, I decided to take a walk on the wooded path behind our house. This path (I later found out from an archeologist studying stone ruins in the area) was actually a corridor used by Native Americans and early Maine settlers to get down to a river stocked with salmon. I picked up some acorns idly and rattled them in my palm as I walked.  I don't know what I'd been looking for; my mind was on other things, but I got the shock of my life when straight in front of me, I spied a Wee Thing in a tangle of downed wood.  For at least three years now I'd been observing a rath of Wee Folk in and around our woods, but after all the books I could get my hands on, I knew exactly what this sidhe was and I was instantly chilled.  When the Witch Hare appears on a full moon and before the Veil thins between Their world and Ours, she is stronger, and more powerful than either the Sentinel or the Huntress in the rath. She is a shapeshifter, a pet of the witch, a devotee to the Snow Queen and can be either a rabbit or even an astral projection between matter and spirit. In any case, upon seeing her I began to shake, for I knew she could force me down to the fort to live for thousands of years, imprisoned.  I kept a careful distance and set down the acorns as a gift. I said: "I know you are both spirit and shadow. I know you can do me harm, so I wish to leave you alone. And tonight, I will lay some cake and wine in by the fire pit by our home for your rath."  A slight breeze ruffled her skirt fashioned from cattail fluff, but she made no move.  At last she turned around and descended back into that dark tangle of downed branches and disappeared.
This is another commissioned art piece, the fairy that shifts into part of the tree when a predator is near. She is like the octopus in how well she blends with her surroundings and exudes the magic of practical creativity.  Her bodice is made of birch, the symbol of white, meaning change. I hand-painted her colors of a tree I once found in western Maine, swirling with forest and spring greens and yellows. Her corsage is a bit of tree lichen that looks like mini trumpets.  Her skirt is made with different clumps of reindeer moss and adorned with a spidery Spanish moss.  I can custom make these for $25 and they are easy to ship anywhere in the U.S. Contact me if interested. 
I have a customer who wants a few customized fairies. Here's one I just made from the leaves of a Dragon Plant. This fairy is very old. In Greek mythology, these “dragon trees” were believed to have emerged from blood flowing upon the land from the slain hundred-headed dragon Ladon. (source: daily.jstor.org)  Her skirt is made with three different kinds of green mosses.   Stitched up the back with green thread.  Be very careful if you come across this fay. She is one of the Queen's keepers of rituals and magic and is integral in keeping the rath safe from enemies.  This wee fairy only comes out in the fall, when the rath is preparing to harvest before they go underground for the winter. She likes to hide in the damp forests and forest edges.  The bodice is made from dried grass and birchand the lovely variagated skirt is the natural changing colors of the high cranberry bush in Autumn. She is one of a kind and I think, one of the prettiest fairies I can make this time of year.  Here is some up close detail of the bodice and skirt.
 I will have this fairy and other handcrafted ones for sale for Maine Craft Weekend Oct. 2-3. Stay tuned for details.  |
Tonic of the Woods
the inspiration behind the creations Photos, stories and concept ©Kay Stephens
Look up the story behind a fairy dress by clicking on the name below
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