An Upcycled Medicine Bag, The Year of the Sheep, and Home Made Incense

Magic is most definitely afoot...

  So here's my latest: a medicine pouch made with upcycled materials.  Specifically, an old wool blanket, fabric scraps, and a sparkly rhinestone magnetic clasp I salvaged from a necklace I made last year.  Apparently driftwood is not the sturdiest media for jewelry making.  Here's the post I wrote about my former necklace:http://thedelightist.blogspot.com/2014/03/year-of-wood-horse-talisman.html. Long story short, I found a small piece of driftwood on a beach in Mexico with an "H" engraved into it by some sort of bug.

 It also had a hole in it that made it perfect for a necklace.  When I got home I saw that it was the beginning of the Year of the Wood Horse according to Chinese astrology.  Cool. The Universe is talking to me. Alrighty.  So I made my year of the wood horse necklace, tried to be all intentional and stuff, and promptly forgot about it all as the zillion things that happen in a year happened.    So here I am a year later, still not super interested in astrology but not against it either and I noticed a few articles showing up in my sphere on the Chinese astrological new year turning yet again. This year is the year of the Sheep.  Hmmmm, I thought excitedly, I wonder if I'll have another magical happening around this like last year? The funny thing is I said this to myself as I was working on these WOOL medicine pouches I have mostly been obsessed with  lately.  Yay!  I love the kind of magic you don't even know you're enacting until you're smack dab in the middle of it.  Which brings me to an even more amazing magic I am currently immersed in.

  Above is a picture of some of the potent ingredients I've chosen for this pouch.  I harvested the golden resin last weekend from a variety of pine trees in Central Oregon. (Sidenote: I love the energy and symbolism of this fragrant golden substance that the tree draws up from the earth and down from the sun to use to heal itself)   However, I did not gather the resin for my medicine pouch project, I gathered it for an incense project I got all hot and bothered to do back in December.  
  I love incense and I thought, "wouldn't it be cool and powerful to make my own incense with only local ingredients I harvest myself?"  I could easily make "loose" incense (the kind you just sprinkle raw resins and herbs on a piece of charcoal) but I really wanted to make cone or stick incense because I DON'T KNOW WHY.  Googling away I find out that the very very special bark that is used as the binding agent in this type of incense comes from a very very special tree that grows in Asia. Well bummer. There goes my idea of local incense.  Totes disappointed.  But wait, maybe if I could just find a picture of this tree I could find one around here that is similar and give that a shot.  So I managed to find the Latin name for this tree and googled up some photos.  You are never gonna believe this but it's the tree in our back yard!  I couldn't  believe my eyes at first so I called Rob over to take a look. Me: "Rob, what is this?"  Rob: "Hey, that's our tree."  No one has ever known what this tree is.  I've not seen one anywhere else.  It looks like a magnolia tree but it gets clusters of small white flowers in the Spring.  So anyhow, I still need to do some more research on how and when to harvest the bark.  I'm also still collecting other fragrant and potent items to put into my hyper local incense.  I will keep you posted on how this all goes.
  And here's one more important thing: this desire to make home made incense led to yet another inspired and magical idea around community and creativity.  But I'm not quite ready to share it YET.  Because A) This post is already getting too long for my taste and I need to get back to making stuff and B) I'm so deeply immersed in this magic, it's story is still unfolding as we speak.  Best to let it unfurl a little but longer.  I will keep you posted.  Meanwhile here's to a wild and wooly Year of the Sheep.  Cheers.

  

Healing through craftiness!

OMG there is some crazy magic up in here!  A cool and inspiring story of cancer, healing, crafting, and intention.

 Forgive me for a kind of long post but this story was so mind blowing to me that I'm being extra careful in writing this in hopes I can convey the full sweep of the experience to you, my dear reader. Above you see pictures of a "spirit box" created by Julia, a friend and fellow mom in a workshop we participated in at our kids' school.  The original inspiration for this workshop was a project the kids did called spirit boxes.  The name pretty much says it all. Start with a wooden box. Put stuff in and on it that speaks to your spirit.  A few of the parents were so inspired by the kid's spirit boxes (which were really quite enchanting and fantastical), they talked the teachers in to having a workshop for the parents.  It was also a great vehicle for the teachers to share some of the philosophies and spirit behind the school.

    It was a perfect venue for getting out my artistic ya-ya's and having fascinating conversations with people I just met. We went pretty deep pretty fast.  Which I infinitely prefer over small talk and chit chat. We got so into making our spirit boxes that the project stretched on for a few months while us busy moms tried to find time to work on our creations at home.
  One of the moms, Julia, got off to late start so she worked on most of her spirit box at home.  But she did divulge to us at one of our meet ups that she wanted to make "healing from medical trauma" the intention of her piece as she was a breast cancer survivor.  I thought that seemed like a great intention for an art project and I was looking forward to seeing the finished piece.
  Finally, by February, we all had managed to mostly finish our spirit boxes and were able get together to talk about it.  It was so fascinating and powerful to hear about everyone's  ideas, stories, and processes, but Julia's in particular had a power and magic that touched us all.  It turns out breast cancer/chemo/surgery was not her only medical trauma.  This beautiful lady has had a lifetime of medical trauma.  When she was a toddler she got accidental chemical burns (lye) on her scalp and endured multiple surgeries to stretch the parts of her scalp that still had hair in an attempt to make her look like a normal kid. (Meanwhile, she was the "weird kid with the wig".)
  And in high school she was diagnosed with scoliosis which led to an ugly brace, surgery, a body cast, and a long stint of being bed-ridden.

  On top of her box she had decided to use some twigs she had cut off a bush growing in her yard  to represent new life and her growth through all of that trauma.  Mind you, at this time it was the dead of winter in Portland and this bush had gone completely bare and dormant.  She stuck the branches in Sculpey clay and baked the whole shebang in the oven at 325 degrees for 25 minutes per the product instructions.  She then glued purple paper mache balls on the sticks, representing the dates of all of her various surgeries.  After this her project was done but we were all having difficulty scheduling a time that we could meet up again so Julia tucked her spirit box into a dark closet for safe keeping until we finally found time to meet in February.  OK, brace yourself because here comes the awesome part:

 When Julia took her spirit box out of the closet, THE BRANCHES HAD BUDS!

  Buds! OMFG!  Despite being cut, baked, and left in the dark, life. powered. on.  Whoa, hello tear producing metaphor!  Thank you Julia for living an unbelievable life and fearlessly crafting, whether it's in the arena of art or life or the convergence of the two.