A wonderful day in Fairyland

I was so lucky on Saturday to take part in what turned out to be my most favourite workshop ever (!), with the lovely Samatha Bryan, the mixed media artist behind the wonderful Brains Fairies, which was held at the brilliant workshops of Hope and Elvis. If you aren't familiar with Samantha's work I urge you to spend a few minutes and take a look at her gallery of wonderful fairies on her website, they are truly exquisite.

Samantha's pieces are inspired by Victorian Gadgetry and Invention, her fairies have wonderful devices to assist them in their day to day duties in Fairyland, including the Fairy Dust sprinkling aid, Special Flight Hats, Bottom Warming garments for Fairies (my favourite!), Fairy Flight Aids and so many more brilliant ideas and inventions!

Here are some examples of her work, there are so many more on her website.

Introducing Brains Aerodynamic Flight Hat for Fairies

Each Fairy is Beautifully made and the attention to detail is exquisite

Look at the sunflower seed earmuffs

Beautifully made tiny flying goggles

Teeny Tiny Mirror, Beautiful handstitched leather clothes

To make our own fairies, the first stage was to sculpt our Fairy Faces. We all made a few faces in different sizes in air drying clay so we could choose the one that best suited our fairy body.

 Then we made the bodies, arms and legs ...

  Painted the body

Throughout the day accompanied by suitably seasonal music, Louise kept us supplied with cups of tea, crumpets and festive bites, as our fairies gradually took shape.

 We cut out our fairy clothes from the so soft leather that Samantha had brought for us to choose from

Two fairy arms

We added our arms to our fairy body 

Then added our main body 

  And the scariest part for me not being very good at painting, creating the faces, now they were really started to take on their own personalities!

They soon started to take shape, here we are adding the teeny tiny fingers! 

Samantha brought lots of natural seed heads, pods, feathers and beans to use on our Fairies. 

 This is one of her example heads, the hat is an acorn cup!

We had so much fun and achieved so much in a day, but we had to wait to fully assemble our Fairies, as the center of the heads weren't dry enough in a day to attach them to the bodies.  I am finishing mine later today, stitching the teeny tiny shoes, attaching the wings, and hope to post her fully finished in the next couple of days!  

Samantha exhibits her pieces at galleries, if you ever get the chance to see them do go along, and she also runs workshops which as you can see are totally absorbing and inspiring!

(Can I also add that Louise has just released her workshop list for next spring and there are so many wonderful workshops to tempt, be sure to book quickly as they are always so popular! I will be!) xox