Hearth and Home // Crafting a Robin Branch

As promised last week, this post will hopefully show you how to craft a beautiful Yuletide branch of robins as a seasonal decoration. It is so simple, it barely needs any explanation!

You will need: 

* Feather robin ornaments (as many as you wish). Ours came from a garden centre, but you should be able to find them at craft shops or on ebay too.

* A log or branch which is big enough to sit your robins on.

* A drill with a small drill bit.

As the robin ornaments are intended to adorn a Christmas tree, they come with wire already attached. If you have robins which don't, simply use a large embroidery needle to make a hole in the robin and push some craft wire into the underside, looped in half and twisted to secure in place - or twist the wire around their little feet.

Once your robins are ready, you will need to drill small holes in your log - one for each robin. Twist the wire attached to the robin until it is thick enough to push into the hole and stay in place.

All done!

You could spray the log with fake snow, or glitter - or for a natural look adorn with some pieces of real holly, glued in place. 

Yuletide blessings and happy crafting!

Post-box delights

When I checked my postbox this morning I was delighted and intrigued by what I found inside...

...a delivery from a faraway land!

Somewhere mystical, where faeries dwell...

...and one such impish sprite had travelled across oceans, to ensure this little package made it to my door.

A gift of imagination and magick!

My heartfelt thanks to Faerwillow over at ~serendipity~  for this beautiful hand-made gift.

One of the wonderful things that has arisen from beginning this blog is the discovery of interesting, thoughtful and like-minded people all over the world. 

Today's blessings go to Faerwillow and her little ones - whose hands have created this pretty postbox delight - for sending it on its long journey. 

Know that it will take its resting place on my wall where it will be treasured and admired. 

One egg is enough....

As the Spring Equinox traditionally marks the beginning of Eostre's month, preparations for tomorrow's Ostara celebrations are already well under way in my household. New spring flowers have been gathered and are adorning every available surface, bread is being baked and an egg has been painted.

Just one egg.

One egg is enough.

First the egg was pricked with a needle at either end and the insides blown out into a bowl.

Then, using a long needle, I threaded a ribbon through the holes and tied a knot at the bottom to secure. (At least I thought it was secure; about half-way through the painting process this proved not to be the case and the whole rigmarole had to be done again afterwards).

Now the egg was ready to be painted and, if I'm honest, I didn't really have a plan for this. I just took paints in what I thought were bright, spring-like colours, and did the first thing that came to mind. After a base coat of turquoise, this was essentially just a case of streaking blue and yellow around to make what can only really be described as a marbled mess. But a pretty marbled mess, I'd like to think.

The lone egg is now ready to take pride of place on my Ostara altar, which I will reveal tomorrow. Brightest blessings.

Make do and mend

Recycling is so much more enjoyable when you get the second use out of something. I take my cans, bottles, plastic, paper and card down to the local recycling centre; I take old clothes to charity shops and pass books along to friends. However, knowing I have got as much use out of something as I possibly can, rather than discarding it because it is getting worn or tatty gives me real pleasure.

My parents and grandparents' generations embraced this ‘make do and mend’ attitude wholeheartedly, yet it is something that a lot of people today have little concept of. It seems to me that many are too eager to have the next model, the newest piece of technology, the latest design and simply throw away those which no longer fit with their forward-thinking aesthetic. As a country we waste so much and it is rapidly becoming a real bug-bear of mine.

This week’s small step towards wasting less was inspired by the growing collection of empty jars in my kitchen cupboards. These come in handy for mixing salad dressings in, storing pins and buttons or adding a sweet shabby-chic touch to the house, dotted about with tea-lights in. Taking this one step further, I thought I could make them into longer-lasting lanterns, by melting down some old candles and a little wax I had spare in my craft box.

I simply melted the wax into a liquid, using a glass measuring jug sitting in a heated water-bath on the hob. The wicks were taken out of the old candles carefully (you can buy full lengths of wick from any good craft shop if you prefer) and tied in place within the jar. The melted wax was then poured in and left to cool until set.

Et voila! Recycled candles in recycled jars. 

Love

I don’t normally do anything to mark Valentine’s Day; I don’t think demonstrations of love and affection are something we should feel cajoled into by people around us – particularly now that they seem to be defined by spending excessive amounts of money on meaningless gifts.  I am aware that I am beginning to sound like Scrooge so I hope the following will provide better explanation...

In a particularly artistic moment earlier this week, I felt that I wanted to take the time to make something special for my ‘someone special’. This was an organic impulse, sprouting from the simple desire to make him smile and put to work the creative spark which has been squashed beneath mountains of coursework marking, assessments and planning over recent weeks.  

The resulting gift is simple and cost nothing but the materials I already had in my craft box yet I hope it demonstrates my feelings.  I wanted to give him something which had careful thought and personal touch put into it and was created out of a love I feel on any given day, rather than when there is external pressure to show it.