Dia de Los Muertos ~ a new tradition & freebie!

October 31st, we had a simple family Samhain ritual, we talked as a family about the meaning of Samhain and rituals and traditions behind it. As we were wrapping up our little ritual, I had an idea. One that would allow us to teach how other cultures honor their loved ones who are gone (because let’s face it, my kid is a sponge and loves learning), allows us to get creative (I love looking for excuses to get my hubby using his creativeness other than home improvement projects), and it would be something fun.

I originally had the idea to print off a coloring book style page and let the kiddo color it in. But as I was looking at images of Day of the Dead skulls, I just wasn’t finding any that spoke to me. I didn’t find any simple skulls that I liked either for us to draw on and decorate.

You ever have one of those lightening strikes your brain with an idea kind of moments? The kind of moments where you face palm yourself on the forehead and exclaim at the top of your lungs “Oh my gosh!! I’m such an idiot!!” Yeah I had one of those moments when I realized that I could just draw the kind of skull I want (I swear sometimes I forget the fact that I can draw). So that’s where my brain child started, a simple skull on a piece of paper.

But it didn’t end there. It couldn’t. Remember my inked skull that I drew yesterday? It’s colored now and all framed. Even the dollar store frame that I’ve had forever for no good reason now has the perfect reason and purpose.

So what did we do with the paper skulls the kid and I decorated? Decorated our family altar of course! I had set up photos of family and pets that have passed on. I also included a small ceramic vase that was once my Nana’s. Our altar is simple this year. This evening after soccer practice, we’ll come home have a dinner of comfort food (mac and cheese is our family’s fav) and light the candles on our altar. We’ll share stories with our son of our fondest memories of family and pets he never got to meet. We’ll tell him stories of his great grandma who passed when he was only 3 months old. We’ll offer daddy lots of hugs and kisses because he misses Sir Galahad terribly. But most importantly, we’ll have honored our loved ones and create a new family tradition.

Want to make your own Day of the Dead skull? I’m sharing the one that I created!!
All that I ask is that you don’t sell it in any form. If you use it online, please link back to this post. Thanks! Let me know if you create your own skull, I’d love to see it!!

Thanks for swinging by and happy crafting!

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: AEDM2012,Art Every Day Month,life,Dia de Los Muertos,ancestors,altar,sugar skull,paper skull template

WIP ~ Tuesday

Let me just tell you that it feels good to have some of my creative mojo back!

I’ve actually have a few things in the works at the moment. Ok I take that back, I have A LOT of things in various stages that I’m working on. But I have 2 things that I am currently working on and hope to finish in the next few days.

I have a few more digital pieces that are in various stages of completion. I’m starting to wonder if I have an OCD or something because I just can’t seem to focus on one thing at a time, I have to have my hands in all kinds of projects all at once! Haha that’s probably why all the projects around the house are in various stages of completion (hubby’s going to help me finish them off one by one though). Anyway, I digress.

You remember my Water Altar that I created last year? Well I finally got around to getting a piece of wood for the other 3! They are still in the painting process, but I look forward to adding all the details and hanging them up when they are finished right next to the other. It’ll be nice to have a finished set.

I’ve been seeing a lot of art dolls lately and have always wanted to create my own but never found a pattern that I liked and that I didn’t have to pay for. It never dawned on me to create my own until I was working on one of my digital pieces. We’ll call it my DUH moment! So I’ve spent an afternoon drawing up a design. This is actually the second run at my pattern. The first run at it I’ve decided the parts were too small and so I drew them a bit bigger. So far it’s working out pretty well. It might need some more tweaking though, we’ll see.

So I am off for more painting and hand sewing. Hopefully my doll will be ready for a face and details tomorrow.  Hope everyone has a productive day!

Work in Progress: Main Altar

You might remember my earlier post about the work I was doing to craft a main altar. Ok it was much earlier, like February. But in case you forgot here is the original post.

My main altar sat in that state for months. Between being distracted by life and craft swaps, it sat and sat and sat until last night when I decided enough was enough. 

I pulled out some background papers that I collected while looking for clip art one day, some parchment paper, glue and set to work tearing and gluing. It was rather relaxing actually and went much faster than I had expected.

I let the glue dry over night and grabbed my trusty E6000 glue and my little circle mirrors and made quick work of gluing them down. The pattern is completely random. It's a mix of 3/4 inch, 1/2 inch, 1 1/2 inch, and 2 inch mirrors.

And here it is all dried and setting in it's soon to be home on the shelf that holds all my herbs.

I love how the mirrors reflect candle light, just how I planned. Scary how things sometimes work like you planned lol.

I love how the inside just glows with reflected light.

I don't feel it's finished yet. I will be adding some finishing touches like to the inside edge to clean it up. I'm not sure if I want to add more mirrors in the inside or leave it as is. But it is in working function now and I love how it's turning out.

Happy Crafting!
~K.Michele

Water Altar

Since my last post, I have been busy crafting items for 2 swaps. However, today I took a break in the middle of my crafting bonanza and finished a project that was started.

A few months back, I had started making a water altar. I used some scrap wood, glued it all together (I love my E6000 glue), and added a few finishing nails to keep everything all in place.  A bit of paint and some embellishments, and it was finished.

Water Altar hanging on our bedroom wall

The image in the back is some scrapbook paper that I trimmed around with some blue ribbon. I glued a seashell and made some pearl seaweed. I even added some glitter seaweed too. The front is a combination of seed beads, mirrors, glitter, seashells, and glass beads. I used permanent markers to draw the seaweed on the sides of the box.

 

Here is is with the lovely goodies my good friend Andréann made and included in my Yule Swap package. 

Water Altar close up

Water altar in natural daylight

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Now to plan out the other elemental altars.

Happy Crafting!
~K.Michele

Work in Progress: Primary Altar

Since moving back in with my parents and having to downsize quite a bit. Our altar just happened to be one of the many downsizes. In the past it has been on top of a cabinet that I had used to house my many herbs in our living room. It was nice because it was up high so little fingers couldn't reach lit candles. And the cats very rarely had gotten up on it.

Being that we now share a house with my parents, who know we are pagan, but don't talk about it (try explaining to them that Brigid is Celtic not Italian, and they still don't get it). So our main altar, which is our primary one, has been moved into our bedroom (with little mini ones spread through out our living space).

Our primary altar is currently still being crafted. But for the most part it's finishing touches that remain. One year my husband snagged a car cleaning kit that was on clearance after the holidays. It came with a container of dashboard wipes, tire cleaning spray, etc. Well the kit also came in a decent wooden box, which I happened to lay claim to before the plastic cellophane wrapping came off.

Wooden box before alterations

 The box opened up with fake velvet lining


I knew that I wanted the box to sit the bookshelf that sits at the end of our bed. I also wanted the lid to fold downward for a work space. What I needed to do was figure out a way for the lid to fold open downward and to be able to keep the back of the box from tilting backwards when the lid was fully opened.

How I wanted the box to open

Easy enough fix. Since we've been remodeling our house, there was scrap wood laying about all over the place. So I opened the lid and placed pieces of wood underneath the main box part until the box was level with the lid. I measured the gap between my floor and the bottom of the box and went about finding pieces of wood that would be wide enough.

It's starting to get it's legs

The altar legs after some black paint

I didn't find wood that was the exact width I needed so that brought me to the table saw and chop saw. Remember to wear your safety goggles!!

I glued the legs on with E6000 (love this stuff!!). I also brought in some finishing nails just in case I needed them. So far I haven't needed to nail the legs on to reinforce them. I also took out the fake velvet backing and painted it black with some craft paint. I also had some circular mirrors from my grandmother that I glued in to reflect candle light and it is a piece of my grandmother who passed away in my altar too.

The altar as it sits in its new spot on the bookshelf

And there it sits on the shelf where it will belong, until I decide to move it. The nice thing about it closing, I can close the lid and keep everything away from peeping eyes (not that I care if people see my altar), furry cats, and little fingers.

Altar opened up

The altar is far from finished. I have a few more mirrors I want to glue on the back as well as some sort of finish to the inside edges just to give it a bit of interest. Something else I need to think about is whether or not I am going to finish the outside of it some how.


I will update this post as I continue to add more to it. Keep checking back!!

Happy Crafting!!

~K.Michele