The Tropical Faerie.

Hey look! A faerie!

Ok, I suppose that's not a good enough distraction to keep anyone from noticing that I am one lax blogger. But she is a cute faerie, isn't she? I started her at the Las Vegas Bead Retreat hosted by Whimbeads in February 2006. Beki Haley designed and taught the faerie class, and all of us had a lot of fun creating our wings and beading our faeries. I'm sad to say that my wings were probably the lousiest looking ones there... As it turns out, I'm not very good at drawing free-hand with a bottle of Liquid Sculpey. Who knew?

The original project was designed for a kit in muted olivines, and while I am a fan of those, I decided to save some money buy not buying a kit, and chose to go for some brighter, more tropical colors. She's my rainforest pixie! C'mon, everyone knows there are faeries in the rainforest. Didn't you guys watch Fern Gully?

Her wings are created with Liquid Sculpey, as I mentioned before, and decorated with various mica powders and glitter, for super-sparkle. My classmate and friend Betcey even shared her vintage Swarovskis with me, so I placed a few of those in the wings, as they matched the green seeds of her body so nicely. The body itself is woven from Japanese seed beads in a few sizes and colors, using Peyote stitch and some fringing techniques. Her head is a big, beautiful Swarovski crystal.

In addition to choosing different colors, I made a couple of other changes to the faerie. She didn't originally have arms, but a few of us in class felt that she ought to. I can't remember how the others made their arms, but I did a really simple Ndebele stitch with picots at the end, then gave her a bright, tropical blossom to hold. I also decided that instead of using a flower bead as a cap, I'd bead her a little flower hat, inspired by Victorian flower faeries. It didn't turn out quite how I planned it, but it's still pretty cute.

This project was a lot of fun, although truth be told, it spent a year unfinished in a drawer. I'm so glad that I finally finished her. She now hangs proudly on my desk (originally she was going to be part of a necklace, but I went overboard on the wing size!). I wouldn't mind making another one in the future. You can never have too many faeries!

And because I love faeries so much, today's Cool Thing is a delightful Earth Faerie Bookmark. I love this artist's papercutting and will likely be purchasing beautiful bookmarks for myself and for gifts. Bookmarks are another thing you can't have too many of!