Samhain and Autumn Crafts

Samhain and Autumn Crafts

Tin lanterns

Materials required:

Treacle tin or similar (clean and empty)

Picture hanging wire

Bradawl

Empty and clean the tin. Clean the tin inside and out with hot water and then make sure its dry.  Use the bradawl to carefully push holes through the tin to make a pattern.  If you are going for a particular design then you might want to mark it out with marker pen first – take care not to slip and hurt yourself as the metal on the tin is slippery.

Punch two holes at the top of the tin on opposite sides ready for the hanging wire.  Loop the wire through and twist each end close to the tin to form the handle.  Turn the lid upside down and push through into the tin to provide and extra base.  Add a tealight.

NOTE: the tin will get HOT!

Vision Board

I like to make a vision board at Samhain, one that sets me up for projects and goals to take me through the Winter months.

All you need is a pin board, piece of cardboard you can stick pictures too or you can even make a collage on the computer. (Pintrest works really well).

A vision board is a visualisation tool to help you achieve your goals, dreams and wishes.

Cut out from old magazines, draw pictures or print images from the internet to create your own board.

The images that you need are ones that really speak to you.  If you want more happiness in your life use a picture of someone smiling or jumping for joy.  Or if you want to bring more love into your life pin a picture of a red or pink heart to your board.  Wanting to move to a particular town or country? Pin an image of that place onto your board.

All the images you use will be personal to you and will work with your subconscious to create the state of mind you want and to help focus you in the direction you need to go to meet those goals.

Your board needs to inspire you, so keep changing and adding to it on a regular basis and remember to hang it somewhere prominent so that you will see it every day.

Black Mirror

A wonderful way to scry is to use a black mirror and they are really easy to make.  Find an old photo frame or picture frame one that has a glass front.  Take the glass out and paint one side of it with black paint.  Cut a piece of black velvet or soft black cloth to the same size as the glass and put that behind it. Put the glass back into the frame and voila! You have a ready to go scrying mirror.

To use your mirror this is best done at dusk or night time, if you can sit with the mirror in front of you and manage to get the moonlight shining in on the mirror even better.  If not just set a lit candle near the mirror so that it casts some reflections.

Relax and think about a question or a situation and then look into the mirror.  You might see images, you might see shapes – just relax and see what comes to you.

When you have finished looking in the mirror make sure to jot down what you saw so that you can look back over it and hopefully make some sense of it!

Pumpkin Candle holders

If you can get hold of some small pumpkins they make excellent tea light holders, you could also use large apples for this as well.  Hollow out a space in the top of the pumpkin so that a tea light just sits nicely inside and that’s it!  Pumpkin candle holder made.

Waxed Leaves

Pick up a nice selection of autumn leaves, then you will need to melt some candle wax, for this you can use up all the old candle stubs you have collected.  When the wax is melted, carefully and I mean carefully because hot candle wax is horrible on your skin (speaking from personal experience) dip each leaf into the wax, coating both sides then lay the leaves on greased proof paper to dry, once they are set you can use them for all sorts of decoration ideas.

Halloween Tree

Using a tall vase, fill it with a mixture of rice and wild rice then stick twigs into it to make a ‘tree’ you can then hang Halloween decorations and candy from the twigs.

Samhain Wreath

Using a basic wreath shape available in craft stores – foam or wicker you can add all sorts of Halloween items to it – autumn leaves, dried apple slices, tiny plastic bats and spiders, make little tiny tombstones from cardboard, use lots of yellow and black ribbon and tiny pumpkins.  You could even cover the wreath shape with dried pumpkin seeds or Halloween candy.

From the book Grimoire of a Kitchen Witch by Rachel Patterson

This book is essentially a Book of Shadows, a Kitchen Witch’s Grimoire. It covers what it means to be a witch, how a Witch works, what a Witch does and how a Witch celebrates the turning of the seasons. It is packed full of information about all sorts of subjects from a breakdown of rituals and magical tools to reading auras and rites of passage, along with meditations, recipes for oils, incenses and spells and a huge amount of crafts to make for each Sabbat. The information herein does not follow any strict tradition; it is an individual interpretation of witchcraft melding together Wiccan training with Kitchen witchery, ways of the Old Craft and a bit of hoodoo thrown in for good measure. Magic and the Craft are fluid and flexible, it is ever changing and we are ever learning.

Available in paperback, ebook and AUDIO format.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska/Unspalsh