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The Vernal Equinox is upon us this weekend. Take this time to plant your seeds both literally and figuratively. This brink between winter and spring holds enormous potential energy, as represented in the seed and the egg. Used eggshells make great biodegradable seed starters for beginning your seedlings indoors before you transfer them into your garden. Imbue the seeds with your hopes and intentions and watch the seedlings grow as you manifest your hopes into reality this spring.
With the February full moon, also known as the Hunger Moon or the Snow Moon, bringing us more frigid temperatures and food scarcity, it is a time for self care to get through the remainder of the winter. Home made tea blends are a great entry point into herbalism - learning about the healing and restorative properties of herbs.
For the first full moon of the new year, we explored the art of bookbinding and made our own notebooks of varying sizes, from recycled materials. This way we could choose how many pages we wanted, and the size and shapes of the notebooks. This craft is a great entry point into crafting with your coven, and will provide you with the tools to make notebooks as needed throughout the year, as you fill yours up.
Let me start this out by recognizing that dreamcatchers are a craft deeply rooted in the spiritual observance of many native tribes. Lately the mainstream culture has co opted and appropriated a lot of native iconography and presents it completely separate from its roots as something fashionable or trendy. We must all recognize this as a problem. If you're not familiar with this concept, it's never too late to educate yourself.
All of my clothes are black or realtree all terrain suits. But I did have one remaining blur denim vest. A vest I love and have gotten a lot of use from over the years, but a blue vest nonetheless. So of course the solution was to dye the vest black. And I wanted to do it the natural way.
For this craft, we used elements from the natural world - bones, crystals, tree trunks, geodes - to make silicone molds which we then made candles from. Once you make the mold, you can make unlimited amounts of candles from it and you can even experiment with different wax colors and scents, though my favorite is just plain, undyed beeswax.
These trivets are designed to absorb some of the heat from the pots and hot skillets when you place the pots on the serving table. They're versatile and utilitarian, and the only supplies you need to make them are twine and some foraged twigs. It's also one of the easier crafts and is a great starting out point.
This is a great craft to do as part of a coven dinner especially because you can all bring your own sticks & elements from the natural world to use and share, and it's highly customizable so you can each put your own creative spin on it.
The July full moon is known as the Buck Moon. Accordingly, we used antler bones to make adornments. Natalia was the host this month and it was her idea to make pendants and bottle openers by drilling into the antlers and fastening bottle openers or crystals into them for naturally inspired and useful items.
I've seen flower arranging classes out there, and although exotic varieties of cut flowers are visually appealing, I have trouble buying them because they're expensive and so many resources go into growing them and transporting them. I have always loved wildflowers, of which there are many to go around and they grow off of whatever the land has to give. No matter what the climate I've always found a way to make visually striking bouquets or local flowers and weeds.
Wood burning plaques, signs, wooden boxes, or really anything made out of wood is a great activity to do in groups. The most challenging part of the process is finding a decent piece of wood to burn into. THough they sell wooden pieces at craft stores, we always prefer to use reused or reclaimed wood so as not to directly contribute to deforestation.
Homemade stamps lend a handmade touch to gift tags, cards, and products and making them is a creative and fun thing to do in a group. The more you practice, the more precise the carving will be, but for your first project begin with a simple design.
Our good friend and coven member Des made homemade chapsticks as holiday presents and we could not get enough of them. So for our next full moon craft, we gathered the ingredients, brought all of our essential oils, and made several batches.
This is a project I've been wanting to tackle for a while and it's really one of the simplest of the crafts I have on here, which allows for you to make many different types of tincture in one sitting. All you need to allow for more than some of the other crafts is ample time for aging. So get out your herbs and barks and berries, some high proof neutral grain spirit, and gather as many recycled/reused jars and small bottles that you can get your hands on.
The upcoming January moon is the Wolf Moon. In honor of it, I made seed art of a wolf in front of a full moon. Wolves occupy a very important place in our ecosystem as they keep herds strong and maintain the natural order in the world. They are fierce hunters but they also have very strong relationships in their packs. This craft uses natural seeds, beans, pods, and rice and you can get creative and make anything you can think of.
These wreaths are made from foraged pine branches that would have otherwise gone wasted and are a sustainable alternative to buying a tree that has been cut down for the sole purpose of enjoying it in your home for one month. Wreaths were originally made for use in pagan rituals including solstice holidays celebrating the change of seasons and fertility. Use your own creativity to make your holiday wreaths.
This is a really fun and visually engaging craft that allows you to use herbs, flower petals, citrus peels, and other natural elements in creating beautiful and high-quality gifts that won’t break the bank. In fact, the more you make, the more cost-effective it becomes. It also allows a lot of room for creativity and experimentation- let your intuition guide you to create new combinations of flavor, essence, and color.
This overconsumption of meaningless things that were most likely manufactured by exploitation of workers in faraway countries is not what the holiday spirit should be about. It should be about connecting with family and loved ones. So while supporting local artisans and craftspeople who source responsibly is one of the better solutions to this conundrum, it can be really expensive to buy all of your gifts that way.
This weekend the Ravenous Craft Coven did an intro to basic metalworking at our friend Marc's metal shop. We learned how to weld, patina, sand, and grind metal and each of us made our own metal boxes. So while this post is not exactly a tutorial, it's an example of a past event that might generate enough interest to do again at a later date.
With the harvest season upon us, it's a good time to have baskets and bowls on hand for picking fruit and vegetables. I got this idea from a friend and although it doesn't employ the craftsmanship that goes into traditional basket weaving, it's a way to make decorative bowls to hold your things that also look pretty cool.
This is a good craft to do together after one of your dinners, or in preparation for a dinner party. The supplies mostly consist of foraged items from nature, so I made mine after the upstate coven weekend, but if you have any leaves, dried flowers, seeds, twigs, or bones collecting at home, you can use them for this as well. If you have a wood burning tool, it's a really good opportunity to use it to personalize each of the names, otherwise you can use ink, pencil or charcoal.
I’ve had this dream of making shelves out of pallet wood for a while now. Since there are so many unused pallets all over the city, it makes sense to reuse their wood rather than buying new wood at a lumber yard the way it makes sense to buy clothes from a thrift store instead of buying it new- because the item has already been made and used, you’re not directly contributing to deforestation or human rights abuses by buying new things for cheap.
I got the idea to make beeswax candles, adding dried roses, cardamom pods and rosemary to make it smell nice and look pretty but be warned that these candles burn viciously so make and burn them at your own risk and supervised.
This is a DIY tutorial on how to make Macrame Plant Hangers. It’s a fun craft that requires few supplies and is suitable to large groups. There’s lots of room for creative differences and twists once you get the basics down.
After we had a devastating fire in our apartment this summer, it took some time getting the house back together. One of the very last things it took a long time to replace was the shower curtain, oddly enough. There are so many awful designs out there for shower curtains, ranging from the incredibly tacky to the ultra feminine, without many cool, rustic options. Even after trolling through fabric stores, I couldn't find a print I was really happy about, so I decided to just make my own and paint my own design on it.
For April's craft, we made planters for small plants and succulents from pieces of wood and foraged branches. As the spring season awakens the plant life around us, it's nice to add touches of plant life around the home. These small planters made from repurposed wood are a great craft to make collectively, and the creative possibilities are endless. Find some wood that you like the look of and gather your succulents or small weeds and try out this craft.