Happy Beltane!

Fernando and I would like to wish all our friends, readers, customers and lurkers worldwide the most joyous and sexiest Beltane ever! Don’t forget to enjoy life to the fullest on this day! We will be back with pics on Monday :D – don’t worry, all convos and emails will be answered.

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Ready For Beltane?

Candle work for a customer, yesterday.

Are you ready for Beltane yet? I have to say I’m not. Not at all. Right after coming back from the Holy Week, we have been flooded again with candle work, spell work, emails, orders, etc. Two of the three dolls from two posts ago have already been sold! I am very happy that they are finding owners; dollmaking is my big love, as you know by now :). I will definitely make more right away, as soon as I have a free evening. I have also been helping a friend with her new blog about animals, teaching her how to use WordPress and making her a banner and business cards.

What we made in Beltane 2010 – Handspun Yarns

I love Beltane. A party celebrated outside, that celebrates joy, fire, sex, and that includes jumping over bonfires and dancing around poles wearing flower crowns? Add some entheogens and it’s very much my idea of Heaven. Though we don’t follow Pagan holidays to the letter, mainly because our weather works the opposite way, we both enjoy a little Beltane celebration. Here, we work outside in Winter and rest in the Summer, so for us Beltane means the garden will start slowing down, leaving more time for indoor activities since it is simply too hot to work outside. More sewing, painting and carving, and more online projects like making a catalogue and website in spanish, a task I’m always procrastinating.

What we made in Beltane 2010 – Offering To The Guanche Ancestors

Fernando is going to carve a phallus for the altar this year, and hopefully there will be time to make another for the shop. Some of the herbs we have been collecting from our garden and from our recent trips are ready to be processed too; also, I have to prepare a few items to be consecrated at Beltane for the creation of a new line of products that we’re making for the shop.

Fernando’s 35th birthday is tomorrow, so please excuse this Witch because I’ll be pampering the birthday boy. I will answer all convos and emails on Saturday.

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New Listings At Sangre De Drago

All these new pieces, plus a few more, have been listed to Sangre De Drago – visit the shop for more details!

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Holy Week Images II

Wednesday
Started the recipe book my aunt gave me making a Tudor scroll on the first page. The handwriting is hers.

The first recipe we added was Beer Bread – a new recipe for us, but it’s going to become an everyday thing I’m afraid! We added shredded cheese and ham and of course a handful of herbs – rosemary, oregano and thyme – to the original recipe. Perfection!

The rest of the day was devoted to drawing. I added two drawings to the recipe book; on the first one, I copied the Saint Michael image from an orthodox icon I found somewhere online and added the frames. The second is just a copying exercise, using The Tambourine Player by Emile Vernet Lecomte. (note: the paper is not that yellow).

Thursday
Started the sketches for a new painting based on the lore about King Solomon.

Friday
Altar clean up, candle work for a customer, and the start of a new batch of jewelry for the Sangre De Drago shop (pics of that on a future post).

Saturday and Sunday – no pics, just resting, watching old horror movies and getting ready to go back to work :).

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Holy Week Images I

There are so many pics of our blogging break that I’m breaking them into several posts for this week.
Monday:
Odin’s altar was set on our studio, as we both felt it was the place where he wanted to be. Not finished still, but already glowing with the warmest energy. I never thought Odin would be such a daddy, but he’s covering us with blessings already.

Under Odin’s loving presence, Fernando made a new batch of kyphi incense, using herbs of the Asatru tradition. Yes, he will start making his own products for the shop! My only job is to make beautiful packaging in Photoshop :).

And I worked on these little dolls – a project I’ve been working on and off for a while. They will be part of a bigger piece of artwork.

Tuesday:
We went to visit Fernando’s parents and made some foraging. We brought home miniature lemons and potatoes from their crops, and a lot of herbs from the ravine: fennel, thistles, fig tree leaves, more wormwood, flamboyan seed pods for Oya, wild flowers for Eleggua and a couple of cuttings to replant of lemon verbena, which I really hope they root because it’s probably my favourite herb. I have a lot of good memories of my childhood related to its scent.

We dined with my aunt and cousin, and she gave Fernando a very old English-Spanish dictionary for his classes – old book smell, bible paper and ragged look: perfection for us – and a new recipe book for me (the marbled paper one). No coincidence since I was actually looking for a new recipe book + book of shadows + drawing journal! It’s so perfect that it even has two recipes from my grandmother on the first page, the only thing my aunt wrote on it: so, it will have something from three generations of Gonzalez women on it. So magical that I got chills when I realized that! The drawing was made on my regular journal, and it was made while sitting on the floor on my mother in law’s little garden, surrounded by bees and a friendly stray cat that sat by my side.

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A Little Break

Candle work for a friend and customer, last night.

I will take a rest from blogging during the Holy Week, because this Witch needs a little break from at least one activity.

The past three weeks I’ve had a spell, a consultation or a candle work every single day.
Also, I have started teaching English to Fernando, three hours a week.
Also, we have started planning a whole makeover for the garden, since we have been two years testing plants to know how they would make it in our weather. That includes designing planting structures, shade structures, inventorizing seeds, planning purchases, and finding free materials to build what we need.
Also, I have made a catalogue this week for Gaia’s Gifts, who will start selling our products very soon.
Also, I have just finished adding items to our Lulu Shop, and I would like to design a few new pieces to our digital section.

Also, after our Odin Dinner last week, the one-eyed God granted us with a new office chair for me and a new altar furniture piece for Fernando, both found after an office near us made their spring cleaning – he used two small doors we found a few weeks earlier to make space for the things we want to keep from our evil cats; now I have to paint said doors.
Also, we are considering making a podcast – yes, we’re that crazy :D.

You know, I sometimes wonder why they call this the “slow life”… anyway, though there will be no blogging, the shops are open as usual and we will respond to convos and emails as usual.

Remember that there won’t be shipping from Thursday 21 to Monday 25 (both included) because of the Holy Week holidays – if you want your purchases shipped next week, make your purchase as late as Tuesday because, due to our time difference, orders made after that day won’t make it to Wednesday’s shipping.

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A Very, Very Small Life

Yesterday one of our cats captured this lizard – most times we can’t save them because we find them already dead, but this time we could take the little lizard right out of our cat’s mouth. This is a young female from the Gallotia Galloti species, which is found in the Canary Islands only. Since the cat’s teeth had wounded her, we place her in a clean jar with a little fruit (which was taken away for the pics) for one night because she was too shaken to be released immediately, and today, after we were sure she was ok, we took the pics and left her free on our garden again. As you can see, she shed her tail while fighting with the cat (the tail moves alone for a few seconds, giving the lizard a moment to run while the spasming tail distracts the cat), but it will grow back again soon. You can read more about it, and see more pics of the grown lizard, HERE.

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Shipping Information – Customers Please Read!

The Holy Week starts tomorrow – We just wanted you to know that, though we will be here and working as usual, there will be no mail service from Thursday April 21 to Monday April 25, both included. All orders made between those days will be shipped on Tuesday 26. I’m sorry for this little inconvenience – all complaints to the Vatican LOL! Again, let me say that we are going nowhere, so please feel free to contact us if you need to do so.

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We’re Back At Lulu!

We are currently filling up our Lulu shop with all the digital files that are listed at The Hoodoo Shop – downloads at Lulu are automatic, so no more waiting for me to get your download link! I think this is very convenient for those of you who only want to buy digital files.

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Just Listed: Money Mojo Bags

Yesterday I made a custom mojo bag for a customer, and the desing ended up being so pretty that I decided to make a few more so you could purchase them already made.

Each bag contains three herbs associated with money, job opportunities and business, along with our own Ashe powder and a copper penny. On the bag’s tie, a buzio shell (symbol of money and wealth) and one of our Orisha Money bills are added, plus a dyed guinea feather – in Santeria, guinea chickens are one of the Orisha’s top offerings.

Each bag comes with a vial of our Gnome’s Gold oil to feed the bag; you must add one drop when you get the bag in your hands, and another drop weekly to keep it working and empowered.

This listing is for ONE bag and ONE vial of oil. Fabrics vary from piece to piece as they are all handmade, one by one – but colours will always correspond to each bag’s purpose, and charms will be always as listed.

If you want to purchase them separately, here you have the Gnome’s Gold Oil;
the Ashe powder;
the buzio shells;
the Orisha Money bills;
and, of course, custom mojo bags are still available here.

Hopefully, this week we will have more mojo bags for different purposes available! I have quite a few spells and candle works, so please be a little patient!

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