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I want the NPC to be a NE Witch encounter. If the PCs explore a particular forest area, they will come across her cottage, however, I want the scene the players see to be a beautiful, tranquil scene to lure them in rather than what it truly is which is decrepit and gloomy and reeking of evil so Illusion magic must be present. The PCs are level 2 (started out as Lvl 1) so I want her to be a difficult encounter if they so choose to fight her for any reason and knowing my players, they will haha.
The problem I'm having is, I want her to both be able to cast Glamer (to disguise her true, horrific, deformed self) and Shadow magic (to make that area of the forest and her cottage look as described above) but be a Witch.
There's no need for the witch in question to be the source of the effect that's causing the surrounding forest and her cottage to appear less decrepit. She might have 'inherited' it from a previous occupant, who 'cleaned up' the place with permanent illusion spells to make it appear cleaner and sturdier. She could even be a descendent of that spellcaster, and the legal owner, by rights of inheritance, or she might have just lucked out and showed up and claimed it after the original owner stepped out to the corner store and got snatched up by a pack of hungry wyverns or something.
In either case, the illusions would predate her, and she wouldn't have to have access to the spell to move in and take advantage of it.
Depending on the nature of the local environment, it might be terribly obvious that something is funky in the area, as the small idyllic wooded grove with flowering shrubs and a brightly colored well-attended cottage sits in the middle of a festering reeking swamp full of mostly dead trees. Alternately, the surrounding forest might be as verdant and lush as the trees around the cottage appear, only the original owner was engaged in some sort of foulness that tainted the ground and killed much of the plantlife around the cottage, prompting them to cover up this evidence of their nasty lines of research with these illusion spells.
This could lead to the possible plot point of there being something buried beneath the cottage keeping the area tainted, and that some sort of cleansing might be required. It might even turn out that the witch is evil *because* of the taint on the cottage and it's surrounding land, and that she wants to capture some people and keep them trapped here for a period of time to 'convert' them to her way of thinking, by letting the taint of the area seep into them as well. Young people would be best, of course, so much less set in their ways, and easy to keep tied up and out of the way. Low-level adventurers will have to do... Ideally repulsive local creatures will show up to serve them as familiars as well, as the dark patron of this area seeks to empower more witches to advance its wicked agenda, which may be as simple as digging it up from beneath the cottage, where it was imprisoned so long ago...
Or not, she might just be an evil opportunist taking advantage of this unnaturally clean-looking cottage in this unnaturally spring-like area of woodlands.
(Note that permanent illusion doesn't change with the seasons, and the cottage and it's surroundings will appear to be lush and snow-free, even in mid-winter. People approaching it at this time will see the snow just sort of end at the border of the illusion, but will get a saving throw pretty much immediately when they enter the area and find that their travel is still impeded by the snow they don't see. (Unless she shovels the path...) It will also *feel* warmer, as the illusion includes thermal components, but anyone taking their winter clothes off might well suffer hypothermia from the winter conditions in this 'false summer!' As a result, there will likely be small dead birds and animals in the area during the winter, tricked by the illusion of warmth into lingering outside in the area, using up too much energy keeping warm and dying of exposure and / or starvation...)
Another alternative for the Witch to be not the source of the Illusions is that she is actually a minion of someone who IS high enough level (and of the right class, if applicable) to cast such Illusions (but who doesn't want to be identified, and so is perfectly willing to let this Witch claim to be the caster, and has probably made it clear to her that she will wind up under 6 feet of cement or worse if she lets on that she's just a minion).