Arming Fairies for the Fair

EDIT: Pardon my dust.  I was using photobucket for legacy reasons  (read lazy) but they changed their subscriptions from a basic for 10 dollars to 400+.. thats silly, so I am deleteing my account and migrating.   It may be a few weeks before I replace all of the pictures.  However, I plan on having some blast from the past showing pictures that were before this blog.
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A few months ago I got a bug to make some wood swords for the rennaisance festival.  My kids had wood swords bought from the fair, one of which I painted pink-purple with lighthing... but I had to be different. So I made myself a few swords... First I made a stand-in for a kanatan.  But it was too boring, and when practicing with my kids I remembered the bane of every adult fighting kids... they arent very good at aiming and you really have to be on  your toes to keep your fingers from getting smashed by flailing kids, especially when they swarm you.
Therefore I designed a series of weapons from small daggers (with finger guards) to short swords for fast blade work (with finger guards) and one great sword (with two finger guards and the ability to use it as a sword, staff or reversed sword depending on how the munchkinds gang up on you).

But, of course I take my swords to the fair and get ready to fight my kids and the swarm of other munchkinds whose parents armed and released them into the grand mele of finger smashing goodness... and my kids want my swords.  I was reduced to the daggers on occasion or convinced one to use one of the short sowrds so I could have a sword and dagger at least to fight off the hoard and keep my kids safe.  And it was a lot of fun!  But I want MY swords... so, ever the enabling parent who is also just looking for an excuse, I had my kids design their own swords with a bit of revision from me for ability to actually make teh things and make them somewhat effective weapons. .

One went with a "heart shaped"  "batleth" style sword which we painted purple.  Its effective for defense but not as good for offense.  Then we painted it purple with flowers and wrapped the handle with athletic tape.

The second wanted a swirly hooky sword because she like how I kept using features on my swords to trap my opponents.  She wanted hers painted white, with metallic edging, styling pictographs, and a bit of blue ice... not to mention the black athletic tape grips.   And I rather like that design, as a single handed sword its well balanced for a little kid and is easily tranistioned to one or two handed.