A steamy x-mas

I started making yule/christmas ornaments early this year (2 weeks ago) and before I stated, I decided to go with a ethnic theme, inspired by "One Thousand and One Nights".
But one of the larger ornaments I made, a winged heart, ended up being quite steampunk in style.
Not that I'm going to complain, I love anything steamy, but it was not the look I was going for.

The heart was a store bought paper mache figure, painted antique gold and decorated with a metal finding, fake stone and angel wings I found at the local thrift store.
I pinned the wings to the back of the heart with push pins decorated to look like brass rivets.

I like how it ended up like and it has really inspired me to make more steampunk yule ornaments in the future.

Still here

I know I haven't been updating in a while, but I'm still here :)

I'm preparing for yule and making many different kind of things, I will post about them soon.
I promise!

Moon shrine

This was actually a shrine made by a girl in the US and sent to me in a swap.
But when it arrived it turned out not to be exactly my cup of tea, but I really liked the basic idea, so I changed the over all look a bit.
I really hope she can forgive me and will not be too mad.
But I figured, when it's a shrine, which is such a personal and spiritual thing, then I really wanted it to reflect me and who I am.

I really liked the color of the shrine, so I decided to keep it, the mixed blues are really beautiful. The chalice ornament was to start with on the backside of the shrine and I decided to move it to the front, paint it silver (started out as yellow) and add an ornamental glass stone.
I also added an ornamental top frame to the front and added different stones.

I painted a full moon inside the shrine, and changed the half moons on the side from white to silver.
On the backside of the shrine was to start with, beside the wooden chalice, a white painted full moon, this I changed into a silver triple moon symbol.

Lastly I added small metal stars to the inside of the shrine and distressed the shrine with a silver ink pad.

Now I just need to figure out what to put in the shrine and where to place it..

Halloween matchbox

I have never made a filled matchbox before, but ever since I first saw one, I have been fascinated by how many items people seem too be able to fit into such a small space.
So making my first one was quite exiting and a bit of a challenge.

The matchbox was made for a swap in the HYR (Halloween year round) group on swapbot, so at least I had a cool theme to go with.

First i covered the the outside of the matchbox with some bright pumpkin orange paper and then I glued black pieces of ribbon on top, to get a raised stripy effect. I covered the whole thing with a clear gloss.
And on top of that I put a cute paper witches hat, that matched the colors.

The drawer of the matchbox i lined with black paper with silver skull and crossbones on it and then painted the rest black.

I filled the thing with a lot of cute and cool small items, actually I was a little disappointed, that I wasn't able to stuff many more thing into it.
But maybe practice makes perfect.

Looking forward to halloween

Halloween, or Samhain, is one of my favorite holidays, though it's not that widespread or common here in Denmark where I live.
You are not able to buy as many halloween related ornaments, decoration etc here as you are in the US.
So I make alot of it myself.

These candle fronts I made many years ago, they are made of fairly thin black paper, so at the moment I'm trying to figure out how I could make stronger versions.
Should I just use thick black cardboard, should I try to laminate them or maybe cover them with sticky-back plastic? And would the plastic melt easily? Any ideas? Anybody?

Well I will probably experiment a bit, until I find a suitable solution.

Medieval bell anklet

After loosing my first medieval bell anklet years ago, I have been looking for a new one that I liked, but never found one.

So after visiting The Medieval Week in Visby, Gotland, I decided to make my own. Because even with all those many sellers from around the world, I did not find one that I really liked.

So at the market I bought a good handful of ornamental brass bells and some round brown leather cord.
When I got home I went on a hunt for a brown thick leather belt in the local thriftstores and found one that I really liked :)

And today I put the items together and got a nice raw bell anklet, that I really love and cant wait to use!

So next medieval concert, market, party or what ever, I will be making alot of noise :D

Moon alchemy kit

Finally I got the last parts of the Moon Alchemy Kit done and sent out, it turned out really good and I am very proud of the result. I must admit that I had a hard time parting with it :)

The kit ended up containing a handdrawn poster poster of moon properties, a leather notebook filled with facts about the moon and alchemy, a hand drawn moon tarot card, a bag of linden flowers, several small moon related items, amulets, charms, seeds, ribbon etc and a lined hand sewn bag, where everything fitted into.

The leather book is one I bought, each page is aged with watercolors and contains several chapters with such subjects as moon symbols, celtic tree moons, recipes and more.

All of the small moon related items have matching handmade envelopes, sealed with wax.
The small items are:
1: Black ribbon
2: Blue ribbon
3: Moon ribbon
4: Handmade egyptian cat amulet
5: Handmade egyptian hare amulet
6: Moon charm
7: Poppy seeds
8: Glass moon bead
9: White crystal
10: Moon stone

I was a little afraid that the kit ended up being way to pagany, but my partner liked the kit alot.

Buddha Shrine

This month I made a personal shrine to a buddhist in the UK, It was great fun and I learned alot about buddhisme that I didn't know before.
I started out with a plain wooden trinket display box (from Netto) that I shined up a bit with some gold paint and that I later aged.
To the bottom I added a thick base made from several pieces of cardboard, that I gave the same treatment af the upperhalf.

To the back of the small display selfs I added pictures and images of random Buddha and asian niceness, taken from travel magazines.
I also glued buttons, metal findings, silk flowers, mother of pearl disk, coins and I made a Buddha head out of plaster, in one of my candle molds and used it as a center piece.

To put on the cardboard base, I made a small candle holder and an incense stick holder, so the shrines user can use it during meditation or for incense offerings.

Beneath the shrine I hung an old prayer bell from Tibet, just to finnish the shrine off.

A medieval feast by mail

I love anything medieval, really anything! Music, art, fashion, history, culture, folklore and food. So when I was offered the chance to exhange medieval recipes with other people from around the world, well needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity right away.
The challenge called for 3 medieval or medieval inspired recipes, one bag of herbs or spice and last but not least, one or more items that to you represent cooking and feasting.
The last item could be anything from napkin rings, to an ATC with a cooking theme, so the possibilities were many.


I quickly decided to send my favorite medieval recipes, on Filled Pancakes and Chickenballs, along with them I'm sending a recipe for Elderberry wine, not so authentic, but it's really great.
My husband and I served this paticular elderberry wine for our medieval wedding, as a welcome drink.

The Filled pancakes we served as a dessert with homemade cinnamon icecream on the side *mmmm yum*
The chickenballs are my husbands favorite dish, he goes all crazy over them and tells me he love me, many times, when I make them ;)

The spice I'm sending along with the recipes are some of my husbands homemade medieval herb salt, we call it wedding salt as this paticular salt and herb mix was made the first time for our wedding.
The salt used is danish smoked salt made after authentic methods and is a real treat in it self.

So that leaves us with the item/s that for me represents cooking and feasting.
In my book, a good (medieval) feast starts with the atmosphere and a well dressed table to really set the mood, so I'm sending two medieval ceramic cups made after original medieval findings. These cups are made in a danish town called Horsens, where there every year is a huge medieval festival, actually it's Europes biggest.
I just hope that they will arrive unbroken and unharmed.

Moon alchemy

One of the projects I am working on these days is an alchemy kit with a moon theme, it's alot of work and progress is kind of slow these days, due to a hand injury.
But I am so exited about the stuff I have allready made, that it's really hard for me not to take a bunch of picture and post them on Flickr.
But as I do not want to ruin the suprise for my partner (yup this is for another swap-bot swap) I am not going to.
But to get a little outlet, I am posting a picture, of the hand drawn tarot card I have made as part of the package, here.
All the other items in the kit is in a similar style as the tarot card and I am really looking forward to be able to share pictures of my work.

My first matchbox shrine

So... matchbox shrines is a whole new thing for me, never made one before and have only seen a single one live (Thanks to the talented Drachenfrau on swap-bot)
But when I came across the "Coffin matchbox shrine" swap in one of my groups on Swap-bot, I knew that I had to join it, it just sounded too cool to miss.

So I have thrown myself in to this, for me new, craft and given it everything I got. Just hope my partner is going to like it.

As My partner really likes vampire, I decided that the creature that i made a shrine to of course should be a vampire.

I decorated the inside of the shrine with a small picture of the coffin owner, metal findings, crystals and a small candle holder with a polymer clay candle in it.
The matchbox is made to open up in the middle of the front and has a coffin shape added to it, that closes with metal brads in a corset style binding.
Becourse of the added coffin shape being longer then the matchbox it self, I decided to make it into an ornament with a black chiffon ribbon at the top.

Being my fist and all, I am pretty satisfied with it :)

Server failure

The blog has been down, due to server failure.
But things should be okay now.

Very scary buttonfairy

After joining swapbot I have learned of so many new concepts, Buttonfairies being one of them.
And it have turned out to be a craft I really enjoy, it's easy to start out, they are pretty and I get to use some buttons from my evergrowing collection.

This month i joined the Very scary buttonfairies swap on swap-bot.com and decieded to make a Ghoul fairy and an Absinthe fairy, they turned out pretty spooky :)

I found some vintage pictures on the ethernet and got my hubby to print them out for me and I then colored them with watercolors, just hope that my partners will enjoy them as much as I did makeing them.

First post

Just testing the system :)