This is my necklace Faerie Meadow. It features lampworked beads by Lois Oster. These beads were a sort-of custom order, as I needed 3 lentils and 5 spacers to make something similar to a necklace I'd already sold. I told her to make me something pretty in colors that I liked, maybe with some frit or something. This is what she came up with, and we're both quite pleased with them. The little flower drops are Thai silver, and I bought them at the 2007 gem show. It's only fair that they're in this necklace, as Lois is the one who enabled me to buy them! At the same time, I picked up the leaves that I used in Sylvan Jewels.I've entered Faerie Meadow into Art Bead Scene's February Challenge -- Chains of Love. You should really check out the other entries, there's a lot of beautiful things. ABS continues to attract the attention of a lot of talented jewelry makers who are using the work of equally talented bead makers.
Last night, we saw The Spiderwick Chronicles. I'm not usually a fan of kid's movies, but they did a good job of allowing the film to have some dark and violent elements. I guess this may in part be because it's a Nickelodeon movie, when I was a kid they had some shows with horror themes and such, so I think they realize that kids can handle a little scariness and a little intensity.
The movie had some pretty cool graphics, and I loved the character designs for the faeries. My favorites were definitely the sylphs, which look like dandelion fluff until you see them up close. More importantly, they aptly illustrated the traditional personality of faeries -- alien, sometimes kind, sometimes malicious, always doing things for their own reasons.
Over all, I was a bit disappointed with how the movie played fast and loose with faerie lore, picking and choosing which bits it wanted to incorporate, and then re-interpreting it to suit the story. Most viewers won't even notice, of course, it's just a personal pet peeve of mine. The important thing is that the movie made the faeries awesome, and it may inspire kids and adults alike to research the lore on their own. I consider it a fascinating subject.
Oh, I like this one, too! Of course, I have the first one, so I'd be prone to like the design!
ReplyDeleteI don't know that you can expect fiction movies to even get fictional beings right. The problem is so many people get their real ideas from fictional movies.
I thought you might like it :) I really love it, and I'm keeping it for myself!
ReplyDeleteI certainly can't expect movies to get such things right, but I can wish that they would :) I just don't understand the need to make things up, when there's such a rich tradition to draw from. I suppose in some cases it might have been to make it more appealing to kids.
For instance, in the movie, goblins are harmed by tomato sauce. I read the section on "protection against faeries" in Katherine Briggs' Encyclopedia of Faeries several times (I can't remember why now, it was for some writing project or another), and I don't remember tomatoes in any form being on the list. However, I'm sure that kids really like the idea of being able to throw tomato sauce bombs at goblins. It's a very messy ordeal, after all.
Anyway, the lore may have been silly, but DiTerlizzi's character designs really were awesome. The movie wasn't as cool as Labyrinth, but I'm glad to see that this generation of kids has a similar movie that they might grow up on the way I grew up on Labyrinth and Princess Bride.
I definitely like this piece, AJ. And you're going to keep it, too? It'll look great on you! Well done. I really like that lampwork and wish I could see the true colors, rather than through the monitor :(
ReplyDeleteThank you, Charlene! I should have brought it to lunch. I was going to take a couple of things for show-and-tell, but then I had to leave earlier than expected so I didn't have time to pack them up!
ReplyDeleteOn my monitor, the colors are pretty close to true... But you lose the depth of the lampwork beads. They're really, really pretty!