Gidget Bates
Fear me! For the dreams that whirled within my head,
that fell abandoned beneath your tread,
rise now from ash with phoenix dread!
Week eight of Three Line Thursday and another prompt.
When you grow up losing yourself in books you can’t help but have an affinity to the written word that will last a life time. Amaranth Alchemy’s brand of creativity involves rescuing old, unwanted and damaged books breathing new life into their pages.
Amaranth Alchemy products…
My daughter, Bekah, and I recently embarked on a new adventure and created Amaranth Alchemy and we’d love to introduce you to our work!
Winnie the Pooh necklace, Dream necklace and Alice bookmark…
Both of us spent our childhoods engrossed within the adventures laid down on pages; words that took us away and threw us into other worlds, other lives and allowed us to escape and experience so much more than our own small worlds could let us! I was the proverbial bookworm, never happier than when I was curled up with a good book. I loved searching my local independent bookstore for second hand books I could spend my pocket money on. The shop owner helpfully rescued tattered copies of The Famous Five and each of The Silver Brumby books so I could immerse myself amongst my favourite things!
The Lord of the Rings products…
My book collection grew and I was always saddened when my beloved books began to fall apart, spine glue disintegrating, pages slipping out, accidents, a book left out in the rain, pages torn, and general wearing out. I kept a lot of my books, reluctant to release them, and unable to throw them away, despite having bought a better condition copy! Over the years my old books vanished to charity, or final acceptance of the dreaded bin, sacrilegious!
This is the average state of the books we use before rescue…
These days charity shops are overrun with books, too many to sell or recycle and many are pulped. Those that don’t make charity are often thrown away to rot in landfill.
Marvels of Nature, Oliver Twist and Dracula bookmarks, and Winnie the Pooh wall art…
Bekah and I decided to do something about these lost and abandoned books and created a rescue service!
Alice wall art, The Story of English Literature bookmark, Birdcage quote plaque and Winnie the Pooh necklace… (clockwise)
Our choice of name epitomises our ethic…unfading creation
Amaranth: a purple flower whose name derives from the Greek ἀμάραντος (amarantos) which means ‘unfading’ and is what books are, unfading stories, and Alchemy: a magical process of creation, turning old books into new.
Dictionary word necklaces…
The vintage book pages we use in our craft are currently sourced from the Healthy Planet (a charity that gives away donated books preventing them going to landfill or being pulped) or from books lost within the dusty back rooms of charity shops or donated to us. Each item we make breathes new life into old pages.
We promise never to take pages from new books unless they are irrevocably damaged!
GIVEWAY: you can own Mrs Tiggy Winkle! Go to our FB page to take part!
You can have a chance to win the necklace above! It’s our very first giveaway and all you need to do is pop over to Facebook and ‘like’ our page Amaranth Alchemy, like and comment on the Giveaway photo…very easy and Mrs Tiggy Winkle is waiting for a lovely new home…could it be yours?
15% Etsy voucher…
Even if you don’t win…you can have 15% off in our Etsy shop until the 15th October 2014...use the code above when you go through to pay for your purchases. Go and take a look and end up with a beautiful package delivered to your door!
Amaranth Alchemy’s first packages all packed up pretty before posting…
Amaranth Alchemy is a mother and daughter team who adore words and art of every kind.
Lisa is an author, photographer and an all-round artsy dreamer. Her first novel ‘Beneath the Rainbow’ is available to critical acclaim. When she’s not writing her second and third novels she can be found tinkering with other arty projects.
Bekah is an artist and designer by trade, spending time as a Make-Up Artist out on photo shoots, and designing websites, logos and all manner of arty things. She can be discovered at Masterpiece Artistry.
Lisa and Bekah have an eye for all things of natural beauty and a talent for putting creative arts together.
Scent
As she ran all she could hear was the susurrus of the murmuring leaves as they swirled about her, and she quickened her pace. She slowed stepping carefully through winding vines and convolvulus, still decorated with scattered diamonds of dew. She paused, one foot still aloft, and flared her nostrils. Heavy petrichor rose from the forest floor masking the scent she tracked. Her foot dropped and she stood silent, listening.
The breeze still whispered, and her mind whirled as scents mingled. Flora’s fragrance intermingled with fungi and soil’s pungent aroma, and different odours emanated from the undergrowth, confusing her and sending her into a tailspin.
She raised her nose, but the scent had vanished.
Just mere months since Christmas and here she was lost and abandoned. Her meretricious collar, now studded with dull zircona, had long since snapped…and she settled in the leaf mulch with a maudlin whine, to wait.
(150 Words)
The Last Krystallos 