Join me as I tell you a classic story using LEGO bricks and special effects, then peek behind the lens to find out how to create your own fairytales!

The Coming of the Fairies

This is a story about one of the most ingenious photographic mysteries of the 20th century. It started in the wonderful village of Cottingley in West Yorkshire when two young cousins, Elsie and Frances, were playing with the camera at the bottom of the garden.

Excited, the girls asked Elsie’s father to develop their photos. What a surprise when he saw the tiny wing-bearing creatures dancing and flying near the girls... Elsie and Frances had seen the fairies!

The picturesque village kept the secrets of the unknown forms of life. Elves, goblins, fairies and gnomes were playing in the flowers, running and appearing in the girls’ view. The next time, Elsie was photographed with a gnome who didn't look like a ghost at all.

Inspired by the spiritualistic research, the great writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in the fairies and established friendly relations with the girls. According to his words, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright had proved the existence of a population that pursued its own strange life in its own strange way, separated from us by some ”difference of vibrations.”

The photos sparked the public interest in the invisible world that was accessible to the young cousins’ visual perception. Who would have thought it? Many experts examined the shots and considered them as an entirely genuine work.

Of course, the epoch-making pictures were highly questionable. The famous magicians, photo experts and journalists remarked on Elsie’s experience of work in a photographer’s studio, the fairies’ motionless poses and distinctly Parisian hairstyles... They supposed the use of the paper models though they didn’t see any threads.

"The Fairy Offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie" (1920) — *"The Fairy Offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie" (1920)*

In 1983 the cousins said that their photos only represented their imagination. The dancing creatures were copied from the children’s book, cut out and supported with hatpins. The girls couldn’t be false to the brilliant writer Arthur Conan Doyle’s trust so they were quiet. Both girls maintained that they really had seen fairies.

"The Cottingley Fairies" — *"The Cottingley Fairies"*

In Search of Magic in Your Garden: DIY Cottingley Scene for LEGO Photos

My photo story is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book “The Coming of the Fairies” (1922) and the cousins’ original pictures. With LEGO bricks and special effects, we can follow Elsie and Frances’ adventure at present, so I’m pleased to share the creative process with you!

First of all, we need to build the village of Cottingley for our main characters. You don’t have to prepare the large-scale setup to the right proportion of the minifigures. On the contrary, the background can be smaller. If you place it far from the cousins it will look realistic in perspective and won’t move beyond the frame of your photo.

I painted the magical creatures and, like Elsie and Frances, cut them out, but with one difference—I photographed them and then cut digitally. We can cut the element of the photo in any program from good old Paint to Photoshop, there’s no difference.

Before “inviting” the paper fairies into my MOC with Cottingley village, I added them to the photos with the real nature in order to see if they were realistic. The result made me very happy: I made my own research of the “The Coming of the Fairies” and saw them in my garden!

So my creatures became the transparent ghosts (using ‘watermark’ settings in any graphic editor) that I had to include into the shots of nature. This time I’m sharing the color version of the gallery.

As LEGO is the main object of the photo, the fairies should be really tiny and have the right scale in proportion with the minifigures (by contrast with the brick-built village). When I used the sepia effect, the photos became LEGO-copies of Elsie and Frances’ adventure.

I created the mystery of Cottingley Fairies in order to invite you to the past and unite the toy art then and now. Hope you enjoyed our time travel in LEGO form!

Have you ever created your own story or special world in LEGO? Let us know in the comments below!

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