Radish Moon's Enchanting Children's Illustrations "I spent hours on a riverbank pretending to be a fairy mouse," says the artist Sarah Nicholas Williams of her childhood in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. I grew up without a lot of toys. But there were books - tales illustrated by Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit), Jean de Brunhoff (Babar) and Ernest Shepard (Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows). "The images really stick with me," she says. Even more than the stories. Memories of her own make-believing, and revisiting those same cherished pictures now with her son Gustavo, 6, are what inspire Nicholas Williams's collection of fantastical paintings for children, called Radish Moon. Done in India ink and watercolor, her work depicts creatures in fanciful scenarios: a goat rides his bicycle by lunar light; a tutu-wearing bird skips rope on the back of a ballet-slippered goat. Prints, available at Acorn, Sweet William and Erica Tanov (and soon at radishmoon.com), come in frames made of driftwood by a man who gathers the wood by canoe in Key West, Fla. Most recently, Nicholas Williams, who lives in Manhattan and is also a personal trainer with a boldface clientele, started turning her designs into heirloom-quality, 24-piece wooden jigsaw puzzles. Made of maple and handcrafted in Boulder, Colo., they're uniquely shaped, "but not so intricate that a child can't put them together." She also offers made-to-order porcelain porringers made in Brooklyn, New York by Choplet. With each vignette, "the child has an opportunity to make his or her own story," says the painter. I'm hoping they encourage imagination that way. Her own son "lets it be known what I should add or take away. I was working on a picture of a rabbit sleeping underground beneath a garden and Tavo told me, "You really need a door. How else will she get in?""