Faery Craft: Weaving Connections with the Enchanted Realm (26 page)

The Mermaids

Just as Faery is growing in popularity as part of the growing urgency of environmental awareness, so mermaids are also growing in popularity, even with their own events, such as Mer-Con in Las Vegas, the world’s first mermaid convention. The attendees of this event are a phenomenon in themselves, the closest thing you’ll likely find in physical reality to real mermaids, and many of them believe they are truly merfolk in human incarnations. These mermaids have specially made tails that they can wear underwater and often hold impressive records for holding their breath in order to perform. One such mermaid is the extraordinary performer Mermaid Melissa, who dons her mermaid guise in order to raise awareness of the world’s oceans and their importance to the future of the world. For more information, visit www.mermaidmelissa.com.

Images courtesy of Steve Williams
(www.stevewilliamsphoto.com)

Image courtesy of Jessica Yakamna
(www.dropjawphotography.com)

Creative Challenge: Faery on a Budget

A common issue that arises is that people would like to come to festivals and other Faery events but are unsure of what to wear or feel they can’t afford the amazing outfits that they see others wearing. It’s true that there are some fantastic specialist craftspeople making high-quality items of clothing just for this market, but it is also true that a lot of people make their own costumes and piece them together from carefully sourced bargains. I feel it is also important to emphasise that plenty of people have a wonderful time at festivals without having to dress up, but if you do want to try a creative approach, here are a few ideas that you don’t need to be in any way skilled to be able to achieve.

With a small budget and eco-friendly principles of reusing materials in mind, I set myself the challenge of putting together a complete outfit in a day.

All images on pages 216–237 by Studio Lotus (www.studiolotus.co.uk)

A friend and I set off into a local town hoping to achieve our mission of a Faery outfit on a budget.

We decided that charity shops were a great option, for not only would we be recycling materials but we should be able to find easily adaptable fabric and clothing at affordable prices. Plus all the money we spent would be going to good causes—bonus!

It can be difficult finding suitable items in the right size, but persistence and a bit of imagination can reap great rewards. We found a purple skirt and a glittery purple top in one shop. The top was rather large, but we had some ideas about easy ways to alter it with no sewing needed. The skirt was a little plain, but again, creative ideas were starting to brew…

Since the top and skirt would obviously form the main part of the outfit, we now needed to accessorise to achieve our desired effect. After much trawling through further charity shops we found a perfect necklace for a tiny amount.

We resorted to a local fancy dress shop to find a very affordable mask and a pair of rainbow-coloured fishnet tights.

We then needed to think about wings, of course. For this we returned to the charity shops and decided that a pair of net curtains could be adapted in some creative ways to make a fun winglike cloak. We also spotted a silver belt and a metallic scarf that gave us some more interesting ideas.

Pleased with our purchases, we returned home and started to create the costume.

The ill-fitting top we adapted by cutting a series of parallel holes down its back and using a long, thin strip of one of the net curtains as a ribbon. This managed to create a corsetlike effect that gathered the material and made the top a better fit.

The skirt was in two layers, so the top layer we cut simply into petal-shaped flaps to give it more of an organic effect.

The silver belt and one of the net curtains were put to good use. The curtain was cut into long strips that were then tied to the belt to make a rag skirt. This is a really easy and effective use of any scrap material you might have around the home. If you have the time, you could also dye it different colours.

The other curtain became the wings. With one long cut up the middle, then two strips cut next to that to use as neckties, it was just a question of cutting out winglike shapes on each side, with a little hole in each corner for a finger to fit through. Again, this could be dyed or painted if you have the time. Even marker pens can be used to good effect to add some colour!