Faeries Friday - Luce Stellare

This is Luce Stellare ('starlight' in Italian). She's a Kirk's Folly pin ( http://www.kirksfolly.com/ ) and their name for her was 'The Astral Fairy.' Sooooo boring! I think she likes Luce Stellare much better. I've been collecting Kirk's Folly pins for over 20 years now.

My mother started my pin collection when I was five. She gave me a little enameled blue bird. I don't really like wearing pins, or much of any jewelry, but I do like looking at them. They're little works of art, even though most of them are only costume jewelry.

Soon after we were married, my husband made a lovely glass fronted shadow box with foam backed black velvet framed by a regular picture frame so that I could have them hanging on the wall just like a framed picture. As my collection grew (we've been married for over thirty years) he kept making new boxes. And it just now occurred to me that I should have taken a picture of one of the boxes, too.

When my little great-great-great nieces come to visit, or granddaughters of my friends, we always have a dessert tea in the Secret Garden as twilight is beginning and I tell them a story. This is the story I tell them about Luce Stellare (each faerie has her own story).

Every evening just as the sky starts to turn pink and lavender, the pin box where the faeries sleep during the day, pretending to be just ordinary pins, opens and all the faeries fly out. (At this point, the children always want to go into the house and check the pin box to see if it's really empty. Of course it is because my husband has taken the faeries out while I've been gathering everyone in the Secret Garden. It's wonderful to see the looks on their faces. See the bottom of the post for an idea about making a faerie 'appear').

Now, each faerie has different things she likes to do at night. Luce Stellare, though, is one of the Star Faeries and has the special job of turning the lights on inside of the stars so they will shine for us at night. Oh, not all the stars, just the stars that we can see from where we live. There are other Star Faeries all over the world who do the same thing.

Luce Stellare always flies out of the same window, the one right at the top of the house. As Luce Stellare flies quickly up the staircases to reach the right window, the star that she carries begins to glow. Sometimes, if you're looking at the window at just the right moment, you can see the light from her star glowing pink as she flies out. Quickly, look! There she is!

Now we must watch the sky. Luce Stellare is flying up to the dark stars, touching the star that she carries to each and every star, one by one. Look! She has touched the first star with her magic star and now it's glowing! Keep watching, she's very fast and soon all the stars will be glowing and twinkling.

After Luce has made all of our stars glow with light, she and the other Star Faeries meet at their favorite star to drink starflower tea and eat starshine cookies and moonglow cakes. They're tired after flying so far and so fast. They need a little rest and refreshment before they fly off to different woods, meadows and villages in their own part of the world. They all have  important things to do. What do they do? Why, they watch to see that children are not being bothered by the Nargles, those mean things that bring bad dreams. Whenever they see a Nargle, they chase it away with the light from their stars. They also guide lost baby animals back to their mothers.

When the sky in the East shows the first tiny hint of the sun's rising, they all fly back to their homes to sleep during the daylight hours. 

So, if you see a little twinkle of light outside your bedroom window tonight, you'll know one of the Star Faeries, Luce Stellara if you live hereabouts, is watching over you!




The faerie light is my clever husband's doing. He ran a one inch wide length of stagecraft mesh, (he took stagecraft for fun in college), colored dark green because it's backed by cedar trees, from the house through the trees. He has the window open a tiny bit so he can hear me and, at the proper moment, he shines a laser along the mesh. It's a small white laser that I made pink by painting the lens with pink transparent glass paint. He ran the mesh at an ascending angle so it looks like she's flying up through the trees. When the laser's light shines on the wire it makes little twinkles.  Thrills them every time!