Posted in Customized OOAK Dolls on April 30, 2012 | 2 Comments »
… enjoy yourself with the first pics of Cornelius’ new clothes at my doll blog!
Today we are attending orders, preparing the week’s new listings (some gorgeous jewelry is coming) and appointments. We had a wonderful time this weekend, enjoyed time with friends and family, rested a lot and are back renewed and refreshed by the wonderful energy of this weekend. We would also like to thank you for all the birthday love you sent – you are truly the best!!!
Posted in News and Updates on April 27, 2012 |
We will be offline for a three-day weekend, to take a little break to celebrate Fernando’s birthday and Walpurgisnacht/May Day. The shop will stay open and all orders will be attended, but emails and convos will have to wait until Monday unless it’s something really urgent or personal. All of this week’s orders have been shipped, and we will be using the magic of these special days to consecrate herbs and elements for the making of new charms, oils, etc.
To all our friends, readers and customers – have a very magical weekend!
Posted in House Of Eleggua In The World, Wood Carving on April 26, 2012 |
Dearest friend Kallista Silverheart, whom is an expert on Egyptian magic and a calligrapher, was our product tester for the reed pens – she wrote this amazing review of them! Thanks so much Kallista, you made our day!
Posted in House Of Eleggua, Tools Of The Craft, Wood Carving on April 25, 2012 |
Please click on the images to be taken to the Etsy listings!
Reed Pens – Handcarved Set Of Two – For Your Sigils, Book Of Shadows, Spell Writing
Set of two calligraphy reeds, chosen randomly from the four sets we have available. The reeds were widlharvested by us at a ravine in Anaga, Tenerife, and dried and carved by Fernando. Each set contains two reeds, one thinner and one fatter, wrapped in satin ribbon with a lovely moon charm – a perfect gift for yourself, or for someone you love. On the pic below you can see a test made with my own set, which was the prototype. I used thinned acrylic paint instead of ink, and worked just as well as you can see. I had never used them before, and I am in no way a calligrapher – if they were easy for me at first try, I’m sure you will do wonders with them!
The reed pens are perfect for your best Book Of Shadows pages, and the hard fiber of reeds allows you to write on other materials like vellum, leather, and of course all kind of papers. If after much use the point gets a little blunt, you only need to wait until it’s dry and sharpen it a bit with an exacto knife.
Vintage Altar Items
Our Lady Of Mount Carmel
Our Lady Of Candelaria
Saint James Altar Bell
Listed separately – small lot of vintage religious items that we got in payment for spiritual work for a customer. The items were part of her inheritance from her mother, and have been kept in pristine condition. None of the items needed any repairs beyond giving them a good cleaning.
Posted in Uncategorized on April 24, 2012 | 1 Comment »
In which I receive a new doll for my collection, thanks to a fairy in the US! Click HERE to read it.
Posted in Crocheting, Knitting And Spinning, Everyday Life on April 23, 2012 |
Went to the woods this weekend, found a small booty of mouse bones, which are now being cleaned to become part of our collection. Spellwork and custom charm making waiting for me today, quite enjoyable work I must say, and some secret projects for gifts that can’t be revealed yet. A luminous morning unfolds, and the budgies are singing their hearts out in the patio, something that always reminds me of my grandfather, who bred these birds for years, and infected me with the love for feathered creatures for good.
Fernando got me two blank A4 sized notebooks, not an easy find as we don’t have any good art stores near us. I’ve wanted them for a long time, because all the journals I have come with grids or lines and drawing is more important in my journaling than writing. The first drawing, of course, had to be Fernando’s portrait, drawn while he was watching a movie. I love drawing from real life, and this type of notebook is perfect for it – small moleskines are not for me.
There has been a little crocheting for my charity project – a new baby jacket + hat set, made with the softest wool+silk yarn, a donation from our dearest Sara. I loved working with it.
Found on the street this week – a small painted fan, a sewing box (I collect boxes with rose prints) and two wood carvings. Small treasures, big blessings.
Posted in House Of Eleggua on April 20, 2012 |
Just a quick note to let you know that our Zibbet shop has been closed and that all listings have been moved to our Etsy shop. There won’t be any more changes until we find an independent shopping cart system that we can integrate into our website, and that won’t happen until summer at least, as we have a lot of work already scheduled for the next months. Hopefully next week we’ll have new listings coming!
Posted in House Of Eleggua on April 18, 2012 | 8 Comments »
I’m really sorry to say this, but we may be leaving Zibbet soon. Sorry for all the work it has taken, and sorry for those of you who have made the very kind gesture of joining the site to buy from us there.
During the past month, we have had three orders from customers that were not charged their shipping costs. Thank God they were all good friends, and didn’t mind paying their charges separately through Paypal. But, had they been new customers, we could have received negative feedback or bad word-of-mouth for a problem that clearly resides on zibbet’s shopping cart system. After contacting Zibbet several times, and after they first tried to blame Paypal to later admit that the problem happened “occasionally” (their word), I have received nothing but vague promises of fixing a problem that is happening again and again, and of course no explanation, no retribution and no solution.
I am not here to sell for pleasure or hobby. I am a business owner, and I expect solutions, explanations and retributions from a service that I am paying. As I follow the rules of Zibbet, I expect them to provide a reliable service, and to be responsible and honest to sellers. They constantly take pride saying that they’re the alternative to sites like Etsy, and are behaving just like Etsy admins do. When I make a mistake, I offer solutions and/or retribution to my customers instantly – when Zibbet makes a mistake (three times), I get nothing.
We have posted this problem on Zibbet’s sellers forum, and no other sellers have been through this problem that we know of. You can read the discussion HERE if you want to, but long story short – admins have not contacted us and we are being politely ignored.
So, until we hear from other sellers and from Zibbet’s admin, we are moving all the one of a kind items back to Etsy, where all of our customers have accounts already, because we want you to go through as less hassle as possible. After I finish moving all listings, I will put the Zibbet shop on vacation mode, and if Zibbet’s admins don’t give reasonable explanations to this problem we will be closing the shop before the next month comes. It will take a few days to move everything as this just had to happen on one of those extra busy weeks where work piles up, but hopefully by the weekend we’ll have everything up on Etsy.
Once again, I am very sorry for those of you who have made the kind effort to open accounts at Zibbet, and we will always be thankful for that, always! If you intended to make a purchase at our Zibbet shop and the items have not been listed at Etsy yet, please let us know and we will gladly make a custom listing for you, or send you a Paypal invoice for your order.
Posted in Customized OOAK Dolls on April 12, 2012 | 6 Comments »
A new WIP, and some reflections on the nature of dollmaking and its magic. Read it HERE.
Posted in Book Of Shadows, Talismans / Amulets / Charms, Tools Of The Craft on April 9, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will remember this pic, taken last summer at our roof garden. It’s our Mirabilis Jalapa plant, grown from seeds that we brought from a ravine in Anaga. After flowering all summer and giving us an extremely generous amount of seeds, the plant withered quickly and died. With much care, we dug the root and left it to dry all winter on a warm and dark place beside the kitchen.
Yesterday it was, as you know, Resurrection Sunday. The root had been drying for about 5 months, so we thought it was a very propitious date to wake it up. We took it our of its dormancy, looking like this:
We cleaned off all small roots, carved a mouth and eyes, and inserted two antique jet beads in the eye holes, taken from the necklace I wore at our wedding.
The root spirit bed was made using a rose soap box I got from a dearly loved friend. A mattress was created with herbs, flower petals and an antique handkerchief from my collection of fabrics.
Several charms, bones, seeds and other gifts were placed in the box along with the root.
The ritual for waking it up was made then – I’m not giving details on this, sorry. We gave the spirit offerings of milk, honey and blood, and kept a candle lit all night. Along the next weeks, we will continue to feed it and empower it, and very soon it will be one of the most powerful talismans in the Temple.
I have written this post to serve as an inspiration if you want to try at creating a spirit root talisman – but, I have to say, this is not a work for beginners. Not because the process is complex or secret – if you have made talismans before and make a little research, you will see it is really easy. If this is not a work for beginners it is because of the commitment it requires; this talisman has to be fed regularly, shouldn’t be abandoned and must be given tasks to perform; if abandoned, it could cause quite a bit of trouble around you. The talisman must be seen, and treated, as the living thing it is, and not as a charm or a curio.
Obviously, to have this project starting at planting a seed as we did has tremendous extra power; although it also works well with plants taken from the wild, taking care of the process from its very beginning (a wildharvested seed) to the natural end of the plant’s life creates a connection of love that is there since the very first moment of its existence. So, if you want to take a root from your wildharvesting areas, I would suggest that you start a relationship with the plant, by visiting and leaving offerings, way before you harvest the root, to strengthen the bond as much as possible.
Just one last note – do your botanical research, because many roots used for this type of craft are highly toxic and should be handled with gloves. I personally don’t believe that a poisonous plant makes a more powerful talisman than a non-poisonous one; it depends on the Witch, on her/his path and its specific needs. Dandelion, jalapa and other tuberous roots are quite safe to be used and make excellent vessels for spirits.
