Flights of Fancy

Well hello! While fluttering out and about on some adventures today, I flew into some very friendly fellow flying friends! *giggle* Have I ever mentioned the amazingly ample adoration I have for alliteration?!

I like it a lot :)

Anywho, my bumpings-into made me think that wow! Winged wonders abound in my land, and in many other lands as well! I decided that a collection of examples should be gathered immediately.

Of course as soon as wings come to mind, I immediately think of my dear butterfly buddies!

And then I realized, you can't have butterflies without...

Caterpillars! TWO caterpillars! That means lots of butterflies!

Hooray! We have caterpillars! Now for the flutterbyes...

Little yellow ones just love fuzzy dandelion fluff!

Pink Butterflies are always in style!

Blue Butterflies share my alliteration adoration!  ;)

And then I remembered wow! There are many other amiable chums who share my size (when I'm small, of course) AND my preferred mode of transportation!

Bumbly Bumblebees! Bzzz!

Ladybugs (or Ladybirds, if you're from my Daddy's land *smile*) are super sweet and have one of my other favorite attributes...polka dots!

Of course, our Hemiptera and Lepidoptera acquaintances are not the only ones zooming around the sky...although the next two friends I found prefer to land in water! *wink*

Quack quack! Life's just ducky for this puddly friend!

Tip of the top hat, Pink Flamingo! 

And there are even some metallic mates sharing the air! Although they miiiight be a bit farther in the stratosphere...

Rocketship! Yay!

I did find a few more examples - feathered, diaphanous, or made of steel - but we decided that they should make their debut a bit later...they have interesting stories of their own to tell that deserve a separate entry!

And that was the end!

Wait. I'm missing something....something that flies around, sometimes in a rather zig-zagging way...sparkles a lot...hmm...what could it be?

Ooh! I remember!

Butterflyish Faery Faaace!

It's me! Because I'm a Faery! *giggle* Hooray!

Um. I had to make myself big in order to show up well in the photo, and my wings didn't grow all the way - sorry about that! *blush*

Goodness gracious - I think it's time for me to land! *yawn* Have a lovely evening, everyone!

Shooting Stars and Soaring Skies,

Violet

Double Challenge? Accepted! Accepted!

I have a confession.

I have not always been the fastest face painter. Correction. I am sometimes snail-worthy slooooow at face painting. Not with kiddos, usually - but when I am sitting alone in my Treehouse it can take me ages to paint even a simple curly swirly design. I just like them to look pretty :)

However! I realize that maybe that's NOT the very bestest practice for real-life application. There's noooo way I'm ever getting a 3 year old to sit still for 7 minutes while I painstakingly apply consummate v's to replicate scales on a two-inch dragon. (Even if it's Trogdor replica, which is rather speedy ! )

Sooo...enter CHALLENGE NUMBER ONE! the Go Go Speed Racer Challenge! *trumpets*

In this challenge, timers were set and stuck to, and no design took over 2 minutes. Some even less. Wow! 

But wait! There's more!

My go-to designs tend to be rainbows, unicorns, dolphins, faeries, mermaids, flowers, and all sorts of feminine ephemeral et cetera. But I meet lots of boys who want paintings, and would prefer they be of the snips and snails variety. Enter thusly....

CHALLENGE NUMBER TWOOOOOO! the Snips, Snails, and Puppydog Tails Challenge! (ahem. *disclaimer* No puppydogs were harmed in the attempting of this challenge! *phew*)

In the second part of this challenge, designs had to be masculocentric. Or, if you want to sound less like a theorist, they had to be boy-friendly! Hooray! *giggle*

Alrighty. Ready? Set?? Wait! Night-time juice?!? YAY! GOOOO!

Tiger, tiger burning bright in the forest of the niiiiight! Um. It's a tiger face! On my leg!

Arr, mateys! I be Cap'n Baldbeard! (I drew the face outside of the time limits, and mainly as a template for doing this on a full person face. Boyfriend doesn't like getting his face painted.)

This is a fiery dragon. He needs more white paint.

This dragon's teeth are scary! Ahh!

Dueling Dragons?

Yes, please!

Yikes. Today we learned that night-time juice and dragon paintings can make terrifying angler-fish looking dragons. Yeesh. Not sure about that one. Okey dokey - do we have time for one more? We do?? HOORAY!

AHH! FIRE-BREATHING SHARK!

Yes. It is a shark that breathes fire. If it has a bear with an axe strapped to its tail, it would be the deadliest catch in the sea. It also would have taken more than 2 minutes to paint. 

Well, that would have finished it up but then! But then! A Faery friend of mine emailed me a photo of a different shark than I usually paint and I had to try! But I had a challenge to maintain - which was scary because I usually paint a new design veeerrrryyy slloooooowwwllly the first few times - annnnd here's how it turned out!

Ok. So it took me more than 2 minutes. About 3 or 4. But I think I kind of like it! It's a little scary - I may have to tone down the teeth - and I'm not sure having him chase after mini-Nemos is the very best thing to do. 

Huzzah! Challenges accomplished! :D Happy Faery! 

Oh no! Realization! Now challenge-less! Well, dear readers, if you have any boy face paint suggestions (or super duper speedy fast face paint suggestions!) pretty please leave them in the comments section!

Shark Fins and Gator Grins,

Violet

Technologic...technologic...

It's June!

Wow!

It seems like May was just yesterday! *giggle*

Ah, June...the month where Spring blossoms into Summer! Tons of flowers, fauna, naturiffic oudoorsiness and the like!

Sadly, it has been rainy in my forest! I do love the rain, but it seems rather opposed to the warm embrace of June!

Because I haven't been able to get into the sunny naturiffic groove of the month, I thought I'd go in the opposite direction...and while acquainting myself with the electronic eyes of indoor occupations, I stumbled across this guy!

- - - i am a robot sent to make you *squee* - - -

*squeeeeeee* !!!!

I just love his robot adorableness. I don't usually feel that way about my paintings, but I feel like he is Rosie from The Jetsons' cute-yet-mischievous nephew. (I mean I don't usually squee over my own paintings, not I don't usually think they're related to the Jetsons' housekeeping robot. Although I almost never think that, either.)

Anywho.

I think he needs friends.

I can try to give him friends...but does anyone else want to help?!

Yay!


Telescopic Arms and Tin Man Charms,
Violet

Just when I thought I'd left the World of Make-Believe...ooh! And footnotes!

Wow!

It has been quite a while since my last post! That is the one drawback of flying! *sigh*

Oh! What do I mean by that? Well, you see, a couple of weeks ago I streeeetched my wings and flew all the way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! It was the home (according to local legend and Wikipedia) of Gene Kelly and Dean Martin, Perry Como and Henry Mancini, Martha Graham, Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol and one other verrry important person who will be mentioned later. Oh! Two! Two other very important people! Here's the first later mentioning - Boyfriend is from Pittsburgh! (That's why I was there - I didn't throw a porcupine quill at an atlas in a random destination quest.) 

Anywho. Pittsburgh, PA is rather different than my home in the Redwoods by the Sea...and while it was a very fun time, I didn't bring any of my usual Faerie Supplies with me - AND went incognito as a human the whole time! Yikes! It was, actually, the very longest time since I grew my grown-up wings ~*~ [footnote the first!] that I have spent without all of my accoutrements/in human disguise!

It went surprisingly well!

However, by the end of my visit I was (as my dear friend Eloise would say) "feeling rawther unusual" ! ~*~*~ [footnote the second!] And then...I saw it! The Magical World of Make-Believe! And many old friends who I had not seen since I was a very small faerie indeed!

I had no idea!!!

The very best shot I could get of the whole display

Lady Elaine Fairchilde

Cornflake S. Pecially (Corney)

                                      

                                                  Henrietta Pussycat and X the Owl

Yes indeedy do!

Oh! P.S. This is the other verrry important person from Pittsburgh that I mentioned earlier! Mister Fred Rogers. *sigh* I really wish I could wear cardigans like he did, but alas! When I try to make holes for my wings the wool tends to unravel.

One of my favorite things that Mister Rogers once said (oh, and yes - we Faeries visited him quite often!) was, "Eternity is made of invisible imperishable good stuff." And bumping into my old friends in the middle of the Pittsburgh Airport (I told you I was going incognito!) was certainly imperishable good stuff. 

Okey dokey, artichokies! (Or humans, faeries, elves, unicorns - I don't know who all looks at this, though I do understand I have quite the following among the "Cynara scolymae") That is all for now! Until next time...

Water Lilies and Wishing Wells,

Violet

P.S. Remember there were footnotes! They are addressed below.

*Grown-up wings. Yes. I am not actually entirely a grown-up? But that's the best way I could think to express it...see, at a certain point in each Faerie's life (and it can be completely different ages, depending on the Faerie) she grows her set of wings that make it possible for her to show herself to humans. I don't even know the characters I would type to convey the word that we have for that phase, so I just decided to call it "grown-up"!

**Eloise is a very dear friend of mine, she lives in a lovely hotel in The City. (I don't know which city, but I assume it is capitalized.) We became very dear friends when she once informed me that "getting bored is not allowed". I quite liked the rule, and have upheld it ever since!

What a Fantastic Voyage!

Oh my goodness.

Yesterday I hid my wings underneath a sparkling Circus Girl costume and joined hands with 5 of my Faerie Friends to fly to the land of Pixar! We painted faces there for four hours, and it was Ah. May. Zing!

I got some requests of things I've never painted before, and holy kamoly! I found some new favorite designs! Although I couldn't take pictures of the subjects themselves, I am going to recreate my top few and post them here soon!

In the meantime, here's a couple pictures from the big day! Ooh, and see that sparkletastically glitteriffic face paint that I am wearing? All credit is due to the fabulous Boss Faerie  =)   How lucky am I?!

Lampy! Lampy! Oh my goodness, it's Lampy!*

* Note. Lampy might in face be from The Brave Little Toaster. I will check into this.

Circus Girl Face!

Side 2 ! And a better shot of my little hat!

Fabulosity, no? Marvelous! Ooh! I also got to give Sully (the Monster, not the pilot) a high 5! Hooray! 

Stay tuned for new designs inspired by the families of Pixar!