The Fairy Doorway!

We finally have a new piece in the Midnight Garden and this one took me around 3 weeks to get right!  The prototype took nearly 10 days of careful beading and right at the end I discovered that there was a little thing that I had overlooked which spoilt the look of it and for me that means only one thing - start all over again!  So here is the Fairy Doorway.  As you can see I have used another wonderful piece of labradorite and this time I have created a brooch that has a little hinged door that opens and closes to reveal the magic inside.

The Fairy Doorway is surrounded by twisting vines, intricate leaves and delicate flowers arching around the simple door with the flowery handle.  The door serves as a shield to the magic inside to protect it from prying eyes and yet at the same time it beckons the brave.  Would you care to take my hand, approach the door, turn the handle and step over the beaded threshold betwixt two worlds ...

The love and loss of leaves!

Although it's a crisp sunny day here today, things have been a bit gloomy now that all the deciduous trees have lost their leaves. I still struggle to come to terms with the contrast between the lushness of my garden in June and the bare black branches in December.

In fact, the view from my window for several days this week was so miserable, that it inspired me to do something about it and cheer myself up by making my own leaves!

Most of my beadwork has a nature theme and I've made lots and lots of different flowers over the past few years, so why not leaves? Of course my first attempt at leaves was Olive Earrings which was published in Beadwork magazine earlier this year, but this week I have 'branched out' and created Willow Earrings and some very festive Mistletoe Earrings!

I now have a pair of leafy earrings swinging merrily from my ears and I feel much happier - hmmmm, do you think I might be bordering on the eccentric?