 You may have noticed that we have something new to offer you. It's these delightful little fairy door charms. If you're like me, there may be a part of you that wishes you could justify buying your own fairy door (It's for the kids, honey, really!) and I know that some of you do. Now you adults can have your very own fairy door too, shiny at your neck. We consulted with three different metal smiths until we found one who we thought really understood and cared about our doors the same way we do. We found Carrie Michael and felt an instant connection with her. She makes them by hand and we've been thrilled with her work. You can find out more about her work by visiting her Etsy shop.  She advised us on our choice of silver we went for the hard wearing .900 option. This means it's 90% silver. 100% would be too soft and vulnerable to damage. It's a wee bit strong than sterling which means the charms should last a lifetime.
We're so please with how they've turned out. They are for sale via our brand new online shop. We've already sold almost half of the initial 20 we had available, so we now thinking we should consider a new style of door. What do you all think? Porthole or Colonial next? xox Karin and Stephen
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 The Titahi Bay Fair is coming up and we'll be there with bells on!
We'll be investing all our free time between now and then into creating amazing and beautiful doors to be available on the day. Any stock left over will be uploaded and for sale via Facebook that night . The fair was heaps of fun last year and I'm sure it will at least just as much fun this year. We hope to see many of the local fans of Imagination Doors there. Come by and say hi!  We received this very touching message today. Warning! I can't read this without weeping a little: Something pretty special happened on the weekend.... Our friends Andrea, Liam, Asha and Hugo dropped off a very very special gift for our little family... A gift that has taken our breath away...a gift that has made us smile at a pretty difficult time..a gift that helps us feel a little closer to our nearly two year old boy x In a corner of our lounge we now have a little blue door. An angel door. This special angel door is just for our Samuel...he can leave messages for us and even pop in for those times when we need him a little bit more... It's also a place where we can leave messages for him x Maia is in love with it (as are we) and chose this spot for it, underneath his photo. Andrea and Liam.. AND the amazing Karin and Steve from imagination doors, we LOVE our little blue door Thank you, a million thank yous x You have done what we thought was impossible... Brought our gorgeous boy a little closer to home xxx (Our 8 month old son Samuel Nalder passed away in June last year from brain cancer... it's his 2nd birthday this week so your door was timed perfectly) 
 Not all doors we make end up with photos on Facebook. We recently were asked to make a special door for a special family, to help them with something difficult. We decided to make the door and donate it as well. It just seemed like the right thing to do. It's events like that which really help us realise that the doors we make and send off to their new homes are not only played with by their new owners, but in some cases those doors also help make a real difference to the family. Sometimes it's to help provide an incentive for good behaviour (Keep your room clean and maybe the fairies will bring you something). Sometimes it's a learning tool (writing letters to the fairies for writing/reading practice). And sometimes it's something a little bit more. The doors become a symbol, almost a talisman. Maybe they are designed to remind people of the old country, maybe they incorporate family values, much loved traditions. Essentially, they provide a tangible way to engage with ideas and memories. Abstraction becomes materialised. We send out these doors daily. We don't always know what happens to them, but every now and then people share warm and special little stories with us., which move us, sometimes to tears. We feel pretty lucky that we get to be part of people's lives in this way. Thanks for letting us. xox Karin and Steve We received some compliments on our logo lately. The design was created by the very talented Miranda Lees. You can find out more about her at www.mirandalees.co.nz We came to her with all our wacky ideas.... (We want the door in the logo, but not too cluttered, we like Pan's Labyrinth, but also Rodney Matthews.... we want to use the logo on our website, and facebook oh, and also on business cards..... Can you make it simple but also intricate?) She managed to distill our varied and contradictory desires to our very clean and classy logo. She also made several versions so we could use them for various purposes. The key inspiration was Pan's Labyrinth. 
 The business cards look great too and we couldn't be happier!  Look at those happy faces!
We are lucky enough to have Sonja share this photo of her happy little girls Mia and Samara showing off one of their doors. Those are very lucky fairies to have found a home with these delightful children! 
We love living in Titahi Bay.
The people are great and the beach is just wonderful. It's just all round a fantastic place to live. We get so much positive feedback about the doors and it's incredibly rewarding to hear how much people enjoy discovering a new door and taking their kids on fairy door hunts. To date there are about eight fairy doors that have been discovered within walking distance of the beach. (There are another four in Whitireia park and one in the estuary.) We wanted to do something fun for families for during the holidays and so the idea of a Fairy Door Scavenger Hunt was born. The first official Fairy Door Scavenger Hunt will be on Saturday the 27th of April. While we are running this as a competition feel free to just enjoy the hunt at your own pace and in your time. We will install two new doors in the 'general area' and in the week leading up to the 27th we will post new clues on their whereabouts here on this blog and via facebook. We'll put up a post with the guidelines soon. If you're local-ish, come and join the fun! xoxo Stephen and Karin It's been a while since this website and blog have received any attention from us. So we have given it the old once-over and blown off some of the cobwebs. You'll now find an updated Google map on the 'Find a Door' page. The map should also show photos of the doors making it a bit easier for people to find them. We appreciate it when people report back on how the doors are doing, if they need any repair or even if they are missing altogether. The 'Buy a Door' page should also make it easier for people to identify what kind of door they want. Despite all the suggestions we have deliberately not put in a 'buy now' option as that would probably require us both to quit our day jobs and start making doors full-time. Having a 'buy-now' option would give us less control over our workload where as now we can still pace ourselves by managing the amount of work we accept. We love making the doors. Well, I say 'we', but Steve is the genius craftsman who makes them. I'm just the administrative support person. But we both love bringing magic into people's lives. (Not just children, you would be surprised how many adults purchase them for themselves!) We especially love hearing about the fairy hunts that people take their children on and how much joy they get from knocking on the wee doors and speculating what the fairies might be doing this very minute. Hopefully the website is a bit more consistent and while I'll still tweak it here and there, we think it's better than it was. We also wanted to thank all of you who have been following us on facebook, who have 'liked' our photos and written messages to us. We have especially appreciated your patience and understanding as we have fumbled our way towards providing you with a professional service. Your support and affection for Imagination Doors has made this all worthwhile. All our love xox 
Someone must have disturbed one a the little folk while they were having there breakfast.   |
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