By Eliza Ridgeway

joe hu/town crier Morel and Emmanuel Matityahu manage Cotton Candy, a speciality shop that sells clearance novelty items. The Main Street shop will be open until the end of this month.

A profusion of feathers and glitter has moved into 157 Main Street this month in the form of Cotton Candy, a monthlong specialty store that opened two weeks ago and plans to close Dec. 28.

Cotton Candy is in effect a giant clearance sale - the stock, all of it 50 percent off, comes from a small chain of stores that recently closed. The pink walls and glittering strings of white lights illuminating the space announce the girl-zone within, a profusion of feather boas, inexpensive bath products, playful trinkets and stocking stuffers.

“The concept is that every little girl wants to be a princess,” sales associate Sheryl Lawless said. “But we sell more tiaras to women who are having baby showers or bachelorette parties than you would believe.”

Playful room accessories like tulle canopies, glowing animal lamps and painted mirrors target young people from toddlers to tweens. The wigs, jewelry and cosmetics would tickle a woman of any age looking for party favors or a treat.

“I bought everybody Christmas presents,” Michelle Coffman of Los Altos said as she hefted a bag of bath products. “All this stuff is why I go to Valley Fair mall - it’s great to find it here.”

A determined customer could find some gender-neutral items, like clay craft kits and specialty backpacks for boys as well as girls. But mostly this is a store for those of the female persuasion. The ergonomically correct backpacks, a practical item surrounded by playful fluff, ride high on a child’s back, sport an aluminum internal frame and extra pockets.

“The nice thing about coming here is you can get a lot of ideas that coordinate together,” Lawless said, pointing to a black-and-white wall of cow-related items. Bath gels, candles and lip gloss are some of the stocking stuffers Cotton Candy carries.

Japanese flower chrysalis eggs offer an inexpensive but sophisticated look - crack off the top of the egg and water it and a real flower (or, if you have a brown thumb, greenery) grows from within. For the mod trendsetter, neon pink, blue and violet synthetic wigs for $5 number among the costume accessories.

Like its namesake, Cotton Candy offers melt-in-your-mouth pieces of fluff. It will brighten downtown with trinkets for a month and then, in a poof, be gone.