Magic Spiral - Crane Bag, Wand and Cauldron

"Prepare and consecrate a wand, a cauldron, and a crane bag as Druid magical working tools using any preferred method."



Here is the picture of my three required magical items from my Magic Spiral work. The brass cauldron is a brass cauldron I found and rehabilitated before consecrating it for my magic work. The Crane Bag is one I crocheted from natural yarns and dyed. The toggle is an Idaho Kokanee salmon and three purple hazelnut beads, meant to be a reminder of the tale of the Salmon of Knowledge. The wand is a light ivory colored, unvarnished rowan branch (Actually, American Sorbus, a relative) that I took a couple of years ago and worked into a wand. It has gold wire spiraled from just above the handle to nearly the end of the tip, and three small pink rhodochrosite cabachons set into the handle.

Sneak Peek at Land and Sky

Here is a sneak peek of the other two necklaces I'm working on at the moment. They are on track to be finished by Thanksgiving week.



First, we have Land. Olive green Kambaba Jasper rondells and focal, paired with Lauscha Olive glass acorns, with all kinds of cool accents in copper. Copper just seemed to be the right metal to add to this necklace. Many of the elements are still a bit bright, but they will gain a lovely patina given some more time. I can't wait to see how this looks once it's aged a bit. This closeup shows one of the acorn "stations." It is a glass acorn shaped bead I created (it's harder to get these things just the right size and shape than I expected!) with a copper acorn style cap, suspended with some copper crystal beads on a square copper leaf bead. You can also see the copper triple oak leaf clusters that go between each acorn station. I can't wait to wear this one.



Sky, on the other hand, is not nearly so far along. I've put the moonstone focal together from two pre-made moonstone focal components, and pieced together the chainwork frame around it, but I haven't started adding bead elements to it yet. Part of the problem is I'm having a hard time making up my mind about which colors of glass rod I want to use. I'll get it worked out soon.

Sea!

This is "Sea." Say hi to all the druidfolk, Sea. *Sea waves...*

Get it? "Waves?" Okay, no more puns for tonight, I promise. ;-)

Sea is composed of several largish hollow glass beads which I created on my torch here at home. These are actually a bit more blue than in the picture. (I need to get my photo setup set back up, but this will do for now.) The stations are sterling silver charms - each side has charms to represent many of the major life forms in the sea. There is a sea turtle to represent reptiles, a seashell to represent mollusks, a starfish to represent echinoderms, a dolphin to represent mammals and a fish bead to represent the fish. The bail on the blue-green coral focal represents the plant life, because it looked to me like seaweed. And the coral pendant represents the corals.



Here is another picture, with the whole necklace.

This is a bit larger and bulkier than I normally do, but I wanted the bubble beads to really shine. Hollow beads have a lot more sparkle than solids do - the play of light can be pretty fantastic. The glass used to make them is Bullseye's Blue-Green Algae odd lot glass, which has blues and greens all mixed up together with a bit of adventurine sparkle. It really does look like a deep sea pool. It's one of my favorite glasses.

Art Spiral

Well, it's time to start updating this blog with my work for the past few months!

One of the spirals I've been working on is an Art Spiral. For this spiral I am creating glass art elements for Druidic themed necklaces I will be creating. The three necklaces I will definitely finish before the end of the year are ones based on the three Druid Elements: Earth, Sea and Sky. I will post pictures of each as they are finished and as I have time to set up the special lights needed to photograph them. (Glass is notoriously difficult to photograph.)

Others I will create as I have time are for specific holidays: one for Imbolc, one for Beltaine, one for Mabon, one for Samhain. I also plan to create a Solstice and Equinox necklace for those times of the year. Each will have a varying amount of art glass, as well as some commercial glass and some metal elements and semi-precious gemstones. Sea, for instance, has hollow "bubble" beads made from Bullseye's lovely sparkly Blue-Green Algae glass, plus silver charms representing the various forms of life in the sea, some largish light gold pearls, and other spacer elements. The focal is a piece of blue-green fossil coral that almost exactly matches the Bullseye glass.

The neat thing about the three Element necklaces is how they will tie into my Magic Spiral. In the Magic Spiral, you are asked to place intentions into three stones - so I chose stones for my three Elemental necklaces for that purpose. In this way I can tie the two spirals together and create a truly unique piece of ritualwear for me to use whenever I like.

Sea is finished, but still needs to be photographed. Earth is about 3/4ths finished, and I hope to have it completed within the following week. Sky is about 1/2 completed, and I plan to have it finished by Thanksgiving. I will be taking pictures of Sea this weekend for this blog, and uploading it and all the other work I've finished that I wanted to share.