A couple years ago my girlfriend and I visited an “oddity” store that was in our town. If you have ever seen the TV reality “Oddities” it was just like that, a store full of weird, out of the ordinary, strange objects. Such as animals in jars, teeth, taxidermy, the strangest of the strange. One particular item we came across was a clear glass dome about 8 inches high and inside was a small skeleton. It grabbed our attention and we went in for a closer look. It was a skeleton of a fairy, made of small animal bones, sitting down with its forehead resting on its hand, as if it was pondering, deeply in thought.
My girlfriend loves magic and fantasy, so naturally she fell in love with it. The fairy was created by one of the taxidermy artists at the shop, and was pretty expensive since it was hand crafted. We didn’t purchase it as we had only gone in to check out the store and window shop.
That following Christmas I wanted to get her something that no one else could, something that was one of a kind, and that ‘s when I remembered the fairy skeleton. I contacted the store to see if it was still available but sadly it had been purchased by then. They did offer to make one for me but it would take 3 months to make and it was almost December already, so it wouldn’t be ready in time.
This Christmas I was going to attempt one more time to get it for her, but when I went to go contact them again, they were no longer based in the U.S. The store had closed and the owners had moved back to London. I searched to see if anyone made them but no one does, and the ones I did find didn't have the same quality nor looked like fairies. So I decided to make her one myself. I have done 3D sculpture in the past in classes I took in college so I knew I could come up with something.
I took a bunch of stems and thought “hey, they’re all different sizes and organic shapes they could be the bones!” So the skeletons bones are all stems that I trimmed, sanded down, and then painted. The skull was actually the most difficult part of the whole thing. There were obviously no stems in a skull ball like shape or a pelvis like shape. I took cardboard and made the skull and pelvis. Then all sides of the skull had to be drawn out first and then put together corner to corner. Then rip the top paper layer off of more cardboard so that it bonded and smoothed around making it more of a skull shape. The jaw and teeth were stems that I had to shape and cut it the way I needed it, and then painted it. The wings are stems and saran wrap with light strokes of paint.
The log it's sitting on was two pieces of a wooden toy that I smashed up, glued together, painted brown, and then smashed it again, giving it the rough look of bark. The snow, grass and berries were all from a Christmas decoration I found at a store. Lastly I didn’t want the position of the fairy being so deep on thought or depressed, so I put him in a playful position with the snow making it a happy scene. For each piece I attached I had to hold each jointed position by hand for almost 30 minutes. It as was a very long patient process. =)