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

Craft: Crystal Ball Stand

This was a quick project that I had completed a few weeks ago and just never posted (I really need to work on that).

Anyway, I was gifted a crystal ball by a friend some time ago. It's a pretty good size ball too, but it lacked one thing. It needed a stand of some sort. I've searched online for bases that I liked. But they were just too fancy for my taste. I wanted something simple and low in case the ball got knocked and it rolled off it's base.

I had picked up a couple small terra cotta dishes for another swap. It dawned on me one day that I had an extra dish that I didn't have a use for. Well I now had a use for it.

A couple coats of black paint, a coat of metallic blue paint, some clear sealer and a piece of felt later...

Behold!

A crystal ball stand!

And it just happened to be the perfect size for my ball.

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