The Fairy Door

The Fairy Door
There is magic deep in the forest, but you must tread softly and listen to your heart to find it. Only then, if you look very hard and are very lucky, you may catch a glimpse of where the fairies live. Their homes are full of joy and colour, happiness and love. The fairies are the protectors of the forest, and they will gently blow their blessings your way if you treat the forest as if it were your home as well.

Inspiration comes to me in many ways, and this year I receive monthly inspiration from my online friend Helen, a painter who lives in Arkansas. I mentioned Inspiration Collaboration in an earlier post, but basically Helen and I both submit images at the beginning of each month and anyone is welcome to use them as inspiration to create their own art...paintings, photographs, poems, quilting, stitching. Participants can create whatever they want, and we post it on our Inspiration Collaboration blog and instagram accounts. We're also planning on publishing a magazine at the end of the year, but that's another story.

The first image I decided to work on in March was this one:

March Inspiration 1: Door Beneath the Wisteria by Helen Eaton
 Who do you think might live in the door beneath the wisteria?  Surely it's a fairy... a sprite... an elf... a gnome...a regular lady with green thumb?  I think she sings while she tends to her flowers and smiles when she greets the mornings.  I think she laughs when she looks at her aqua door and is glad she chose aqua.  I think she is content. I think everyone who visits her feels welcomed and at home.

My biggest challenge was that it's March...and in Nova Scotia that means no flowers! How was I to come up with a photograph inspired by this lovely, summery painting?

I decided to go with the fairy theme and use my photographic library to create a fairy house in the woods.  This may seem like a simple idea, but it took hours and hours to create.
First, I used a photo of interesting tree roots that I took in May 2019 as my base:
 
Then I added elements from many other photographs...

...a door and hosta plant from a photo walk in July 2009 in Lunenburg:
 

I changed the colour from red to aqua (to connect with the inspiration painting) and then decided that the black door on the left was a little too formal for my fairy house. So I changed it with a door from 2009 photo of a fishing shed in Blue Rocks: 

and I changed the colour from red to purple as a nod to the wisteria in Helen's painting.
Then I added more details which are subtle but they are there....a window and siding from another 2009 photo...this time from Port Medway:

...a purple rhododendron from a 2009 garden tour (I have no wisteria photos!):

 
...flower pots from Lunenburg in 2018:

...a birdhouse from Annapolis Royal in 2009:

...and to add a bit of fairy magic....everything was overlaid with a colourful tabletop from a visit to a restaurant in Chester in 2017:

The final step was to soften the whole image to make it look a little unreal....after all, it is a fairy world!

The Fairy Door