The Witch's Book of Self-Care: Magical Ways to Pamper, Soothe, and Care for Your Body and Spirit - Arin Murphy-Hiscock 2018
Activities to Foster Your Creativity
Spiritual Self-Care
Do you feel that you’re not a creative person? Do you have trouble letting go and just messing about? Do you need inspiration? Here are some activities to help you explore different techniques that you can use in a spiritual context.
Vision-Board Focal Balls
Make a focal ball to represent something on your vision board, such as a goal or concept you really want to focus on for a while. Saving for a vacation to Paris? Collect a tiny Eiffel Tower, make a baguette out of play dough, find a tiny wine bottle or glass charm, and add red, white, and blue ribbons. Concentrating on expanding your creative relaxation? Fill a bauble with miniature pencils, brushes, and a tiny book. Check the miniatures area of your craft store for ideas, or make your own miniature objects out of clay. If what you want to use is too big to fit into a bauble, buy a small glass jar instead and use that.
Hang the bauble or place the jar where you will see it often. When you see it, it will bring your goal to your conscious mind and reinforce your commitment to that goal.
What You Need:
♦ Hollow plastic craft ball (the kind that opens into two halves; your choice of size) or a small clear-glass jar
♦ Trinkets, pictures, or other representations of your goal
♦ Adhesive gum or play dough
What to Do:
1. Open the plastic ball. In the lower half, use your trinkets and other items to build your little diorama or display, using the adhesive gum or play dough to affix things in place.
2. Gently snap the upper half onto the ball. Hang or place the ball where you can see it and be reminded of your goal.
Weaving
Weaving is a magical craft. It literally weaves disparate things together to create a useful solid piece of fabric. It is very meditative. For this craft, you can use whatever colors of yarn you want. For your first time, try to use worsted-weight yarn for the warp (the vertical lines of yarn); check the band or tag of the yarn for the weight. Worsted is a medium-weight yarn, and the band may have a yarn ball—shaped symbol with the number 4 on it. You can use thinner or thicker yarn for the weft (the back-and-forth horizontal yarn) if you like, but worsted is great for that as well. When you get to the actual weaving stage, you can use one color or several different ones and change colors where you feel like it.
This craft looks long and complicated on paper, but it just needs a lot of words to describe what to do. Read through the whole thing before starting so you know what to expect. Basically, you’re creating a frame loom and you’ll be weaving a tapestry on it.
Made as written, this craft will create a woven piece about 4" × 6". If you want something bigger, scale up your piece of cardboard accordingly and use more craft sticks to raise the warp all the way across your loom.
What You Need:
♦ Piece of cardboard about 6" × 8"
♦ Pencil
♦ Ruler
♦ Scissors or craft knife
♦ 2 standard craft sticks
♦ Glue
♦ Masking tape
♦ Yarn (DK to worsted weight, in colors of your choice)
♦ Plastic or metal weaving/tapestry needle
♦ Fork or wide-toothed comb
♦ 2 twigs (or 2 more craft sticks)
To Set Up the Loom:
1. Set your piece of cardboard in front of you, short side at the bottom so that you have a vertical rectangle.
2. With your pencil and ruler, draw a line across the cardboard 1/2" from the top edge.
3. Measure 1/2" along the line from the left edge. Make a mark. Measure 1/2" in from the right edge and make a mark there as well. These will be the outside edges of your woven piece.
4. Between these two marks, make 10 evenly spaced hash marks from the line up to the edge of the cardboard. (They’ll be approximately 3/8" apart. Don’t stress about exact measurements.)
5. Repeat steps 2, 3, and 4 along the bottom of the cardboard.
6. With the scissors or craft knife, make slices all the way through in the edges of the cardboard along the hash marks, stopping at the horizontal pencil line. Do this at the top and the bottom of the cardboard.
7. Lay a craft stick across the top of the cardboard along the pencil line so that the upper edge of the stick is at the bottom of the incisions, and glue it in place. Repeat along the bottom with the other craft stick. (These sticks will raise the warp so that you have room to slip the needle underneath the yarn as you weave. It also reinforces the incisions, so they don’t tear.)
8. While the glue dries, measure out a piece of yarn about 7' long for your warp. Use a piece of masking tape to secure one end to the reverse side of the loom at the top of the cardboard. Bring it up over the top and press it down until it catches in the first incision along the top edge. Run it down and press the yarn into the first incision along the bottom edge.
9. Loop it behind the loom and bring the yarn forward through the second incision along the bottom edge. Run the yarn up and over the top edge, pressing it into the second incision along the top edge.
10. Loop the yarn behind the loom and bring it over the top edge again, pressing the yarn into the third incision. Continue warping this way all along the loom. When you have reached the last incision, secure the end behind the loom with another piece of masking tape.
To Weave:
1. Start with a piece of yarn about 24" long in your first desired color. (If you want to use all one color, you’ll still need to weave with smaller lengths of yarn. Don’t use a piece longer than about 36".) Thread the plastic needle. Don’t bother with a knot.
2. You can start on either side. Slide the needle under the first thread, over the second, under the third, and so on to the end of the row. Leave about 4" of the end of the yarn sticking out the beginning of the row.
3. For the second row, bring the needle around the outermost warp thread, then go over and under the warp threads to the other side. Make sure you’re going over the threads you went under in the first row and vice versa. Don’t pull the yarn too tight at the end of the row, otherwise you’ll end up pulling the outermost warp threads toward the center. (These outermost threads are called the selvedges.)
4. Repeat these two rows. After every four or five rows, take the fork or wide-toothed comb and gently push the weft threads down toward the base of the loom. Don’t pack them down too hard; just neaten them up so the rows lie barely touching one another.
5. You can change color any time you like by slipping the needle off the current yarn at the beginning or end of a row, leaving the last few inches draped off to the side, and starting a new length of yarn in the color of your choice. If you want to keep using the same color, make sure you leave those few inches of the original length of yarn off to the side, and start a new length, leaving a few inches of the new piece of yarn sticking out to the side as well. (You’ll deal with these ends sticking out later.)
6. Continue until you have woven all the way up the warp yarn to the top of the loom.
Finishing:
1. Start weaving in the loose ends. Thread the needle with one of the ends and weave it carefully into the yarn woven around it. Make sure you loop the end around a warp thread first so that you don’t accidentally unweave the yarn. You can trim the loose end after you’ve woven it back into the fabric for an inch or two. Do this for each loose end.
2. Take one of the twigs or craft sticks and start lifting loops off the top of the woven piece, one at a time, and slip them onto the stick. If the loops are too loose or the stick too thin, add another stick along the first one and tie the ends together with yarn from your project. (You could also glue them together after you’ve woven the second stick through; avoid getting glue on your weaving.)
3. Repeat along the bottom with the other twig or craft stick.
4. To hang, cut a piece of yarn about 10" long and tie it to either end of the top stick.
Tips:
♦ You can sew or tie beads, pompoms, or other items onto the fabric either as you go or after the weaving is complete.
♦ If this craft interests you, there are wooden frame looms, like the cardboard one you made for this project, that are commercially available.
Clay Offering-Bowl Craft
This craft makes a small offering bowl, about 3" in diameter. An offering bowl is used to hold offerings to an entity or abstract. Offerings can be as simple as a flower or some water or whatever you feel will be pleasing.
Working with clay can be immensely rewarding. It’s a way to connect to the element of earth, and the cool damp feeling can be relaxing, while the pressure and force needed to shape it can be satisfying. The clay you choose is up to you. Your local art-supply shop can offer a variety of clay: clay that can air dry or clay that can be baked in the oven. Please follow the directions on the packaging of the clay you choose for working with and finishing the clay.
What You Need:
♦ Plastic gloves (optional)
♦ Clay (air-dry clay is recommended)
♦ Newspaper
What to Do:
1. Put on the gloves, if using. Cover your working surface with newspaper.
2. Pinch off a knob of clay about 4" in diameter and shape it into a ball.
3. Push your thumb down into the middle. Don’t press it all the way through to the other side.
4. Start pinching the edges to make the sides of the bowl. Gently pull the sides out at the top to make a gentle outward slope.
5. Shape or smooth the bottom of the dish as well.
6. If desired, draw designs into the inside or outside of the dish (see following tips).
7. Allow the dish to air dry.
Tips:
♦ Painting the clay before it dries can create a crackle effect; however, depending on the paint and clay combo, it can also flake off. The type of paint you use will depend on what type of clay you’ve chosen to work with. Research what paints are most suitable. Experiment with some scrap clay first.
♦ You can carefully pinch or shape the upper edge of the bowl to make a fluted or not-round shape.
♦ For this basic craft, you don’t need any specific tools. However, if you wish to make designs on the bowl, you can use toothpicks, a small screwdriver, a dried-out ballpoint pen, and/or the like. If you repurpose something from the household that you’ll need to use again, make sure to wash it well to avoid clay drying in any small grooves.