Click on “Show” when you are finished to see the results.

How many different looking mermaids can you create? Let us know which one is your favorite!

We are slowly building a gigantic mermaid image bank. which you will be able to trawl to find the best and the brightest mermaid pictures, paintings, and artworks that have been created. Stay tuned for more mermaid pictures added each week.

Mermaid art is everywhere…

For Disney Ariel has been a million dollar mermaid. The Little Mermaid DVD has sold thousands and thousands of copies. There is even a Little Mermaid game available for the computer.

There is a Barbie mermaid figure. You can find prints, posters, dolls, figurines, all sorts of artwork. There are clothing items such as: purses, skirts, even bedding.

Mermaids are sexy…

The mermaid is a sex symbol. Even women see her as beautiful and sensual. There is nothing sexist or demeaning in this. These are some of the mermaid’s strongest qualities: her freedom and her confidence.

In the book “The Mermaid Chair” by Sue Monk Kidd, the protagonist begins to paint pictures of herself as a mermaid. Her mermaid art helps her to get a better hold on the under-developed parts of her character.

Mermaids are mystical…

For me, mermaid art connects to something mystical in the human psyche. I remember once many years ago I had spent a day alone at the shore. When the sun set I went to a seafood restaurant on the bay. After the meal, I was going back to my car when I heard a splashing sound like someone coming out of the water…

Immediately, an image flashed into my mind. I saw a mermaid just off shore, wrapped in her beauty and mystery. The feeling was caught up with the day I had spent, the night, and the bright lights at sea. I had a very strong sensation of someone actually being there.

This powerful experience stayed with me for months only gradually fading away. The emotions I had then re-occur almost every time I am at the shore.

I invite you to enter this site, read the stories and look at the pictures. You will see what mermaids mean to me, what they mean to others, and perhaps what they mean to you.

A Friendly Warning

Some of the mermaid art in this site contains nudity, hopefully always in good taste. This is inevitable given the subject matter. If it will bother you then all you have to do is avoid the galleries. There are plenty of stories and lots of information about mermaids in the rest of the site.

Okay!…

Enough talk already! If you want to jump right to the galleries and see some mermaid art you can click on any of the following links. The art galleries are interlinked so you can move from one to the other without returning to this page or the list of all galleries. To go to the list of all galleries just click “Galleries” on the navbar on any page, or click “All Galleries” below.

Prints of Mermaid Art

Original Mermaid Art

Cartoon Mermaids

Mermaid Pictures

All Galleries

The above links go to an external site, which we hope to replace with an in-site location for all the very best mermaid pictures.

Mermaids- History of Mermaids

Mermaids have long fascinated humans, right from the days of Hans Christian Anderson’s novel, The Little Mermaid, to the children of today that read about Mermaids and Mermen in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. The fascination of humans with these peculiar creatures is not restricted to the West. Philippines, Japanese and a variety of other completely distinct and separate cultures refer to mermaids and mermaid like creatures.

Firstly, what is a Mermaid?

A mermaid is a creature that is half human, and half fish. Mermaids are female, while the Mermen, naturally, are the males. They have the torso of a fish, and the upper body of a human being. Mermaids are also often interchanged with water nymphs, water fairies and selkies. Mermaids are usually considered to be very beautiful, and extremely attractive in looks, as opposed to one’s normal presumption that their scales would make them look repulsive. According to legends of yore, there were many instances where in sailors that caught a glimpse of the Mermaid were so attracted to it, that they jumped into the sea to make contact, and were eventually drowned in the process. Some cultures accuse Mermaids of possessing such beauty that they have a hypnotic effect on men. Some claim that the Mermaid drowns them in the process of taking them to their underwater homes, while others insist that Mermaids are creatures to stay away from, as they drown their victims of lust purposely, and suck out their life from them.

The word Mermaid itself is a word made of two parts; the first being the word Mer, the ancient English word for sea, and maid referring to a female.

Historical insight of the Mermaid

Unlike the Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, the original mermaid referred to by various cultures and civilizations, and their records and books testify to the presence of the mermaid. However, many of these reports cite that the mermaids were not very pretty, as depicted in the movie! The numbers of references available to Mermaids, from Russia to Japan, India to East Indies, The British Isles to the Atlantic Ocean bring forth a spirit of curiosity and awe in these magnificent and wonderful creatures that grace the sea.

One of the earliest mentions of the mermaids dates back to well over five thousand years ago, and finds mention in ancient Mesopotamian culture. According to them, it was the merman, Oannes, which rose everyday from the water and gave man knowledge, reasoning and brought writing, wisdom, science and other such civilization institutions. The Mesopotamian culture credits Oannes with the deed of thrusting forward the civilization by advancing their development and helping man in technology.

The Assyrians mention mermaids or half human half fish like creatures in records that date back to 1000 BC. According to their folklore, the first mermaid was a goddess that loved a human shepherd, and eventually killed him. The story goes forth that she tried to hide in a lake out of sheer ill fame and agony, but the waters could not contain the power of her beauty. Hence, she was transformed into half a fish, and lo! The first Mermaid was born!

The Greeks also recognized the Assyrian Mermaid and referred to her as Derketo. According to Greek mythology, King Alexander the Great’s sister was transformed to a Mermaid after her death, and she still lives in the seas in the Aegean.

The Arabians and Persians also mention the Mermaids and Mermen in their famous folk lore, the Arabian Nights. References to Mermaids and Merpeople are made in a number of stories. However, more than as half human and half fish creatures, the Arabian version of the Mermaid looked like a normal human being, but had the uncanny ability to breathe underwater. Some of the stories of the Arabian Nights deal almost completely with these strange peoples, their cities, their way of life and their character. The Arabian Nights also make mention of the mermaids that have the hypnotic effect on sailors. This time it is not their looks that make the sailors helpless and drive them to their doom, but the beautiful and irresistible songs that the mermaids sing to lure them into their traps.

Strangely enough, the British and English mention of the Mermaid in their folklore does not do the mermaid any kinder. They consider the mermaid to be a bad omen and the Mermaid is usually an indication of an upcoming thunderstorm, hurricane or a ship that will eventually sink and go down. The sight of a Mermaid meant death for all the sailors of the ship that sighted the Mermaid.

The number of paintings of Mermaids and Mermen by various artists and the poems written on these fascinating creatures has indeed reinforced firmly the fact that they possess a strong hold over native cultures throughout the world.

The African folklore is also not far behind in the tales of Mermaids. African culture gives the mermaid a special place in their religion. The god of water Yemaja, is actually a mermaid, and is referred to as the “mother whose offspring are like fishes”! The Africans deem the water goddess Yemaja as a very important and crucial personality among all their gods. According to them, the water goddess Yemaja, supports all life underneath the water, and without her existence, no other sea creature can survive.

The West Africans also mention the Mami Wata, which is their version of the mermaid, which matches the description of what we currently consider the Mermaid to be. According to their legends, Mami Wata is a powerful spirit that can bestow upon one horde of wealth, health, power and immense beauty. The spirit however, demands in return, a strict confidential sexual fidelity. The goddess sprit is difficult to please and any slight displeasure caused to the spirit by the human partner will result in the complete removal of all the accumulated wealth and powers of the human being, rendering the unfaithful mate helpless in the world. There are festivities that are celebrated in Western Africa even today, of which Mami Wata forms an important part.

Legends from Warsaw say that the Mermaid swam all the way to Warsaw from the Baltic seas, in order to take the position of the slain Griffin that the mermaid greatly loved and admired. The Griffin was the defender of Warsaw, and was killed in the war that followed a Swedish invasion. As a tribute to the loyalty and courage of the Griffin, the Mermaid took its place unhesitatingly, and has ever since, been the symbol of Warsaw.

Christopher Columbus also reported sightings of Mermaids in his travel logs. He claimed that he saw three mermaids that were playing with themselves in the water. According to him, the mermaids were not as beautiful as ancient texts and literature had mentioned they were, and he testified that they had a face that resembled a human one with striking and distinctive human like facial features.

Henry Hudson, the explorer and traveler also reported sightings of Mermaids along the coasts of Russia, near the North Pole. The explorer claims that the mermaid, upon attracting the attention of the whole crew of his boat, looked earnestly upon all the sailors that gathered. He reported that the Mermaid had long, flowing black hair, white skin and fully developed breasts of a woman.

There is also the story of the Viceroy of Goa, in India, that performed a completely autopsy on the bodies of seven mermaids recovered by them from fishermen, after they were caught in their nets off the coasts of Ceylon, currently Sri Lanka.

There are also reports from Borneo, where local fishermen claimed to have trapped a mermaid in their nets, following which they brought it to land, and kept it in a large vat, where it died after a few days. According to them, the mermaid made the noises of a mouse, and shrieked many times, before it finally died.

Sailors of the ship The Halifax also claimed that they had hunted down mermaids in the seas, and eaten them. They claimed that mermaid meat tasted like veal, and that they were successful in capturing many such mermaids, near the East Indies.

P.T.Barnum, in the year 1842, claimed to the world that he had finally procured the body of a real mermaid from an English scientist that found the Mermaid near the islands of Fiji. He called his exquisite display, the Fiji Mermaid. However, the Mermaid was a fake, and again, there was no concrete proof towards the existence of the mermaid in this world.

Real mermaids – are they fact or fiction?

The question has puzzled sailors, scientists, and writers and poets ever since the earliest days of sea travel. The truth is, in this day of high tech equipment and underwater cameras and submarines, we are no closer to knowing exactly if mermaids exist or not.

One of the pieces in this puzzle comes from realizing that many sea creatures can, at times, grow to have human like characteristics. Sea Cows can mutate to have very human looking features because, as mammals, they once lived on land as monkeys, and ony later returned to the sea. Humans, too, can grow in the womb with fused feet in a process known as Sirenomelia. Our earliest ancestors were sea creatures, and it is for this reason that babies can be born that look identical to the mermaids depicted by sailors and artists from the past.

If this can occur in people in cities, how much more could it happen in isolated ocean communities, in islands and peninsulas away from the towns we have today? And if a group of these babies were born and lived in the seas, what if they formed families and reproduced, continuing and perhaps developing this condition. It would certainly help them survive when the main source of protein was fish and looking for food underwater.

People are always fascinated by the stories, legends and mythologies of mermaids speculations about real mermaids continue to exist. People for ages have been looking for real live mermaids that seeing sea animals like the Manatee, or sea cow, are often mistaken to be real mermaid sightings. Other creatures that are featured in the museums from the 1800’s are fakes, build to cash in for a curiosity with these magical creatures from the sea.

Such fakers would usually find a preserved body of a monkey, and a large fish such as a Groper or other reef fish. Using the taxidermist’s art, these two creatures could be combined to form one seamless ‘creature’. A clue to spotting these types of fakes is if the ‘mermaids’ are said to be only baby or pigmy mermaids. Full sized mermaids are too difficult to make, as monkeys only grow so large.

In 2005, a story of a “real mermaid” which was allegedly found in Chennai following the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004 circulated in the internet.The story was backed up with pictures of the Legendary creature with mermaids tail which inevitably made people ask “do mermaids really exist?”.

According to Source, the body of the “real mermaid” is at the Egmore museum guarded under tight security. Does this prove that mermaids are real? The source claims that the mermaid called Kadal Kanni is a hoax like P. T. Barnum’s Fiji mermaid. Others are not so sure. All we can do is compile the evidence and let our science – and our imagination – take hold…

Mermaid Costumes

Mermaids have always stood for magic, power, beauty and grace. It is no wonder that girls usually want to dress up as mermaids for their Halloween costume parties. A mermaid costume can also ooze sex appeal if worn by an adult. One might be very confused as to where a good looking mermaid costume can be located. You can always make your own mermaid costume. Before we get into the details, let’s see what a mermaid costume typically consists of.

What does a mermaid costume look like?

A mermaid costume is indeed beautiful to sport in any costume or Halloween party. The top is fairly skimpy, usually leaving the hips exposed. The bottom can be a skin tight skirt, tight pants or any close fitting garment. Hair do’s and accessories are some places where the mermaid costumes really score. Mermaid costumes come with a plethora of accessories, jewelry and add-ons!

How do you make a mermaid costume on your own?

A mermaid costume might look like it involves weeks of tailoring and hard work, but it is a very simple affair. Luckily, the top hardly involves any work at all. A swimsuit top would do the trick perfectly. Since the mermaid is a sea creature, colors that would compliment your costume’s look are blue, aqua and green. Silver would also do a great job, but finding a silver swimsuit top could be exasperating. You can always glue sea shells on to the surface of the top to make it look even better. A pearl necklace would suit the costume perfectly. However, even a simple flower necklace could do the trick. Hair is something that a mermaid costume can really afford to experiment on. Whether you spike your hair up if you have short hair, or let your hair loose all the way, you really can’t go wrong in this area. Clam shaped hair clips are common in the market, or you can even wear a crown of flowers! Some other accessories that could spruce up your mermaid costume are scepters, crowns or perhaps even a sword and a shield. You could always even glue shells on to your old purse or hand bag and this would compliment your costume perfectly. Another nice idea for your purse would be to draw and paint on its surface to make it look like a fish. What better company for a mermaid than her fish friend!

The mermaid bottom is the most intricate and complex part involved in making the mermaid costume. However, depending on the need of the occasion, one can create a bottom that is simple and gets the point across, or make a beautiful bottom that will dazzle and grab looks! If you use a skirt, make sure that the skirt is tight, all the way from the hips, right down to the knees. If you need to walk around a lot, it’s always advisable to flare them out from knee onward to make for comfortable walking. Tight pants are also a great idea and would be ideal for kid’s costumes. You can spice up the bottom by adding reflective material like glitter and reflective or even glow in the dark paint to it. You can even glue on some more sea shells and pearls to make it look flashier. Wave like patterns usually do the trick when it comes to painting on your skirt or tight pants. The color of the bottom is also important; make sure you stick to blue, light green, purple or aqua. Your sandals can be your normal ones, but with some reflective paper or glitter paper stuck on it. You could also try and make your footwear look like flippers. This will clearly keep others wondering how you manage to walk in that costume!

Of course, you may also buy your new outfits in our online costume shop (we accept credit cards) if you prefer to have a costume made for you – you can also pick up some great mermaid themed dresses and printed shirts. ]]> http://www.mermaid.net/mermaid-costume/feed 16 http://www.mermaid.net/mermaid-jewelry http://www.mermaid.net/mermaid-jewelry#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:00:49 +0000 Admin http://mermaid.pagetopia.com/?p=21

Step inside our underwater store

Inside you will find mermaid jewelry including:

Sterling Silver Antiqued Mermaid Charm $36.00	Sterling Silver Wrapped Sea Nymph Mermaid R… $29.97	Sterling Silver Antiqued Mermaid on Anchor … $15.10
Sterling Silver Antiqued Mermaid Pendant $22.20	Sterling Silver Movable Mermaid Pendant $20.10	Sterling Silver and Brass Mermaid Pendant w… $52.00
Mermaid Brunette Travel Jewelry Case $35.00	Mermaid Pendant $23.00	Sterling Silver Carved Blue Fiber Optic Mer…

DVDs

The Little Mermaid (Two-Disc Platinum Editi… $17.99	The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea [S… $19.99	The Little Mermaid Trilogy $34.99

Mermaid Clothing

Beaded Taffeta Mermaid Prom Dress Bridesmaid $249.99	Ed Hardy Inside out Mermaid Short (4012-sim) $65.00	Karina Nites Black Sateen Cocktail Evening … $34.99

as well as mermaid books, music, costumes, toys, kids’ clothing, and figurines.

If you enjoy Disney’s The Little Mermaid, have you seen the mermaid scene in the Harry Potter films? We have all the Harry Potter films, so you can order them individually or the whole set online. We also have all the Harry Potter books, if you are missing one from your collection!

You can find all the components for a great mermaid costume – a blond wig perhaps, a tail, fake eyelashes, or a prom dress that extends to your toes and splashes out like a satin tail (a subtle nod to mermaid style, we like to think!). We also have clothes for babies, kids, teens and adults alike!

If there is anything you feel is missing from our mermaid store – just drop us a line – we can search high and low to find you a bargain. Or, if you know of a product, send us a link and we can usually find it cheaper for you. We aim to have the biggest range of the best mermaid gear in the world!

Step inside our underwater store now