LEAF FAIRIES....Whimsical, Magical Fiber Sculpted Fantasy Accents!

This is one of my "leaf fairies", which I just finished creating a couple of days ago. They are one of my favorite items to create, as I love painting onto silk fabric using Jaquard's Dye-na-Flow fabric paint. It is such fun watching the colors flow onto the fabric, and being able to blend all the different colors!




I created the leaf template from an Aspen leaf, which I pressed, then traced onto paper, and enlarged it on the copy machine to this size. I enlarged it from its orginal size to 144%. The "leaf fairy" above is now available in my DZFANTSY SHOP, click on the link below to find out more about her:

GREEN LEAF FAIRY

I use silk tussah fabric, as I love how it really absorbs the fabric paint so well. I use a medium size brush to paint the leaf. Tussah silk is a silk fabric derived from wild moths whose main diet is oak leaves. Its natural colors can range from a pale cream to a darker tan, depending in the amount of tannin that is in the oak leaves. I have found that it is becoming more difficult to find suppliers for this particular silk, and the prices keep going up. It is also the silk I use for all of my creations' faces and the mermaids upper bodies.

After I sew the leaf, I lightly stuff it with acrylic fiberfil, top-stitch it into a design, and then the fun starts....I get to hand-paint it!! You have to be rather quick when applying the liquid paint, and blend the color, or it will leave lines in the fabric. I also paint a small section of the silk fabric to use in creating the face. These are "leaf fairies", and as they are the "spirit and essence" of the leaves, their faces have to blend in with whatever color I decide to make the leaf.

The fairy's face then gets sewn, stuffed, hand-drawn, needle-sculpted and hand-painted. After that is completed, she gets her hairdo and accents. The "fairy leaf" hairdo above is a fun, sparkly, Italian yarn with wispy eyelash and paper ribbon as its texture. For her hair accent, I added a Swarovski crystal flower bead, and several 4mm Swarovski crystals. I also added another crystal flower bead, and 4mm crystals at the base of the leaf.

Below is another green "leaf fairy", which I recently designed. Her leaf is also the aspen leaf, but with a different yarn for the hairdo, and a slightly different stitch design on the leaf.

In a future post, I will be showing how I create a huge "maple leaf" fairy out of a maple leaf that my husband and I found while walking in Lake Geneva, WI. The leaf measured 12" x 12"!! I picked it up...rushed to the car with it and pressed it under my floor carpet so I could design a silk "fairy leaf" from it. I have only made two of these huge maple leaf fairies so far, as they take a very long time to top-stitch the leaf itself. Do stop back to see this....it is quite an amazing size!