THERE are a few ‘must see’ venues when visiting the Scenic Rim and one of them is exploring Gallery Walk on Tamborine Mountain.
Once here a checklist of sorts is ticked off...there is the cuckoo clock shop, the brewery that looks like a castle and for many years there was a fairy shop.
The fairy shop was owned by Faerie Fleur.
She transformed the shop into a magical space with sparkling lights and enchanted corners where little creatures peeked out of faraway trees.
The shop closed a few years ago but the magic continued just two kilometres away from Gallery Walk and within Faerie’s North Tamborine home.
Faerie is an artist who uses glass as a medium.
Her birth name is not Faerie Fleur, she bestowed that moniker on herself – an act that speaks loudly of her passion for fairy folk and magical worlds.
An artist through and through, she uses skill alongside imagination to transform and meld hot liquid into all sorts of shapes.
The majority of people only know the results of glass blowing and not the process.
It is an art that is both physically and mentally demanding requiring a high level of skill and coordination to control the glass as it’s being heated and shaped.               The glass needs to be constantly monitored to ensure it doesn’t become too hot or cool, causing it to break.
Faerie said before she entered the world of fairies and art she worked as a chef.
She was a single mum and her mother suggested she find a hobby to break up her hours as she worked so much.
“I looked around at different things and I landed on making things out of lead light, so I did that for a few years,” she explained.
“Then I opened a fairy shop on Gallery Walk, when that closed I went across the road to one of the other shops that were selling dichroic glass jewellery.
“At that point in time they’d just started importing small pieces of blown glass from China.
“I was making the fused jewellery with them and so entranced by the blown glass that I needed to know how they did it.”
She threw herself headfirst into the world of glassblowing, watching as many YouTube tutorials as possible on how it was done.
Faerie has been a professional glassblower for 10 years and her creations are sought after as clients seek out beautiful glass ornaments and keepsakes.
“Part of my she-shed is devoted to recycling materials, torch work,” she said.
“But with the mosaics, I try to recycle as much as I can and for that matter, we’re recycling almost half of our product from recycled glass as well.”
She enjoys glass blowing because when heated it becomes malleable and able to be transformed into absolutely anything.
Not everything ends up the way she envisioned though.
“Yesterday I was making a piece I wanted to be a small bud vase in greens and it was looking lovely until it blew out on one side,” she said.
“I thought, well...that happened, now it’s going to be part of a sculpture instead.
“That’s the thing about glass, you can’t make it do anything, you encourage it.
“If you are putting the colour on and pressing or trying too hard, you could wreck it.
“You have to be very gentle with it otherwise it doesn’t love you back.”
Things she has learned about working with glass is when it’s still hot it will probably bounce if dropped.
“It bounces if it is above 600 degrees because the glass is still moving and not yet brittle,” she said.
“It doesn’t crack and break, it will be dense and solid but won’t break.”
Faerie runs workshops and teaches the art of glass blowing from her home studio.
She also sells her creations and fills special request orders.