Fairy Steps

Fairy Steps is a site that sells handmade shoes, clothing, bags, and accessories. The products are very organic looking, and some really look like it could be fairy wear. Really cute stuff.

http://www.fairysteps.co.uk/

Rosie Bair

Bair crafts cute little faerie figurines. My personal favourite by her is her line of splat faeries.



This is her myspace where she has some of her work up; http://www.myspace.com/widdlefaeriescom

She also has more of these figurines posted on this site http://www.landofmyth.com/index.asp

Kelpie

A kelpie is a being from Celtic folklore. They can have several forms, a horse, a human, a horse with a fish tail, but a horse is usually the common form. No matter the form however, the kelpie is always connected to some body of water. The kelpie is also known to drown people in said body of water once they get up on their back.



This site has some basic information

http://www.theequinest.com/kelpie/

http://www.jh-author.com/kelpie.htm



A movie with a kelpie (though it doesn't say that it is a kelpie at any point in the film) is Into the West. A story about two boys who find this horse which ends up bringing them back to their roots.

Kodama

A Kodama is a Japanese tree spirit. They live inside a certain tree and if you chop down that tree it's thought to be bad luck. The trees that do house the little spirits will be marked by a shimenawa, or a special rope use in the Shinto religion.



Kodama were made famous by the movie Princess Mononoke.

Hazel Brown

Hazel Brown's art is interesting compared to some other faery artists because while it is somewhat cartoonish and the figures look like they could have been painted for a children's book, it still has a wonderful prickly, ethereal feel to it.

http://www.faery-art.com/

Selkie

A selkie is a being that is caught somewhere between a human and a seal. They are shape shifters. Usually you will only see one as a seal but every so often one will take off it's seal skin for a time on land. This is usually what spawns the stories about them, for if a person can capture the hide of a selkie, that selkie will be under their power.

Selkies are faeries from predominately Scotland and Ireland.



A good site with a little bit of information is http://home.cogeco.ca/~eligio/selkies/selkies.html. it goes over some basics in a fair bit of detail.

http://www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/selkiefolk/ is another ok site and has just some basic information on orkney legend, a place on the northern most edge of Scotland.

I've also mentioned selkies before in the film The Secret of Roan Inish http://faeriesight.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/the-secret-of-roan-inish/ that is a phenomenal movie about selkies and this is the scene from the movie where the selkie legend is told. Parts 2 and 3 are on youtube

There are countless books on the subject, but a good one I have read is called Tales of the Seal People by Duncan Williamson. It is a collection of stories Williamson compiled when he went to Scotland.



Another good book is called People of the Sea by David Thomson. Again another collection as this guy goes around Scotland trying to find selkies.



There are also many newer fiction books that feature or have selkie cameos. A book that features a selkie is Seven Tears in the Sea by Terri Farley and a couple of books with selkie cameos are The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and the last book in the sevenwaters trilogy by Juliet Marillier, Child of the Prophecy. All fantasy books of course.

Pan's Labyrinth

This movie is told with the air of a classic fairy tale, not the watered down versions we give our children today but the real ones with fangs and claws. There is an atmosphere of danger and suspense that constantly surrounds the girl, Ophelia and in response to that there is a persistent arousal of hope, or fantasy. Ophelia's environment is not ideal. She is in some camp under the jurisdiction of a heartless man who has married her mother and who only cares about producing an heir. Everything around her is militaristic and hard and cold, and yet she continuously bumps into this other world of wonder and mystery, of fairies and fauns and the like. It's like the metaphor of the flower that grows out of concrete. finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.
It's debatable whether she is actually interacting with this other world and that it exists, or if she's creating this world to escape her less than ideal reality. I suppose your answer would come from what kind of person you are and how you perceive the world. I enjoy the experience of believing it is real with a constant skeptic in the back of my mind nay saying everything the believer says, so I guess my view would change depending on what day you chanced upon asking me. The bottom line is that story is very well put together and whether or not you believe the world the girl is interacting with to be real, you'll enjoy it either way.



Here's the film's website http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

Josephine Wall

I'm pretty sure many people may be able to recognize Wall without actually knowing who she is. I've seen her work on various websites, on cards in various stores, etc. So there's a good chance that people who aren't usually into fantasy art have already seen something.

This is one I see most often



here are some others



Those are only a few examples but you can check out her website http://www.josephinewall.co.uk/art_gallery.html

Fairy Dust

Want your own fairy dust to apply at will? Well lucky for you efairies.com has a few products that might spark your interest.



http://www.efairies.com/clothing_costumes_fairydust.htm

For the younger girl in your life http://store.fairydust.com/glitter.html might be a better bet as it's packaged in a more youthful way.

And for those who want a DIY version http://www.educatall.com/page/250/Fairy-Dust.html has a reasonably cost-effective recipe.

The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint

This was a really good book. I picked it up on a whim having heard good things about it, and it lived up to its expectations. I was kind of hesitant to get into it because it's about some street tough girl who has a run in with faeries, and I suppose there is a huge potential for this story line to destroy itself with cheesiness. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well it was put together.

Imogene's a bitingly clever, strong, mature heroine. The book starts with her family moving to a new town and her attending a new school. She was with a rough crowd in her old town and was raised by hippie parents who gave her space to live her life, so as a result she's seen enough of the world to be comfortable with who she is when we meet her and has a kind of inner calm, not getting too caught up with the appearance of things, like social status. So she befriends a solitary girl named Maxine.

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book, it was full of adventurous energy and I wouldn't have minded if it continued on without any supernatural interference. But she meets a ghost who unintentionally brings her to the attention of some unfriendly faeries. Even though faeries are introduced to the story, the mood doesn't go all whimsical and light-spirited. This is a great dark faerie tale for teens.

Imogene tackles all of her problems by herself, which I found refreshing. She didn't go running to her boyfriend or family or friends for help, though she recognizes that they are there for her and her friends don't let her go into trouble by herself, she doesn't cling to them and finds strength within herself. I've read many stories trying to achieve this character or this mood and they always fall short of success. This is one of the few teen books I would recommend to someone without commenting on what I found unsuccessful about it. It was just really well written. I recommend.