Spyrit Dancers' Musings On All Things Wiccan

I finished up my candles, put energy into them, then lit them, and they are on my altar now, sending healing energy on cat angel wings to my son and his fiance. Here is a picture of them.

The wand is the wand I made for myself out of mesquite, with an amethyst point, and purple suede.  The table they are on is my working table for spells in progress, and yes, I really do have light purple closet doors. I put their names on the front of the candles.  They are a blend of soy and candillia wax, with blackberry leaves, mesquite leaves, lemon balm, Myrrh and a bit of cat nip (for the cat angles) ground up and embedded in the wax, along with 6 rose quartz chips.  I also added a few drops of rosemary essential oil, and pine essential oil but not enough to make them scented.  The next batch I make will have lavender to make them lavender scented, as I have a lot more of that scent.

I also put a little cat angel on the back, and the rune URUZ for healing.

Then I added some paw prints.   These were a real labor of love, and took quite a while to make.  I will have some additional ones available on my store soon.

This past few weeks has been tough as far as my cats go.  First, Momma Amelia and Two Tone show up after what looked like being tortured, and and Two Tone doesn’t make it and has to be put to sleep.  Meanwhile, her brother, has a genetic defect, and has to be put to sleep.

Then Friday, I went into the garage to feed the cats, and found the cat we trapped and had fixed on Tues, curled up dead.  So I buried her on our property, feeling terribly guilty for taking her in.  I tell myself, she might have had other issues going on, or been sick, as all the rest have survived the surgery no problem.

When Jim and I talked about Two Tone was on the other side of the veil, helping his brother and sister that remain become more domesticated, so we can move them in the house, inspiration was born.  The idea of “Cat Angels” came to me, and although not a new idea, I brewed it in the back of my head.

At the same time, I’ve been trying to come up with a craft item I could use cat food cans for, as we are going through dozens a week feeding the strays and our kitties.  So while burying our last stray on Friday, and praying to the Goddess over her, I came up with the idea of Cat Angel Candles.

I’m currently working on the first batch, which is a labor of love.  We take the labels off, clean them really well, then soak them in bleach water for a few hours to get any lingering traces of food off them.  Then we clean them with acetone to get the label glue off them.  Then the fun begins, as I take a dremel and patiently grind down all the left-over bits of the lids to make them purrrfectly smooth inside.

I had gotten about this far with the first batch, when I found out my Son was in the hospital Friday afternoon, and his Fiance was also having health issues.  So my candles have evolved into Cat Angels helping with healing.  My first candles are for the two of them.  I gathered every healing herb I have on my property (a bit of mesquite for healing, lemon balm,  and blackberry) then added cinnamon and Myrrh and ground it with a mortar and pestal.   I also added rosemary and pine essential oils for healing too.

I’m using a blend of soy and candelilla wax for vegan candles.  Finally as the candles set, I placed rose quartz chips in the top of the wax for further healing energies.

The outside of the can will be personalized with their names, the rune URUZ for healing, and of course, cat paw prints.  I’ll post up pictures later on today when I’m finished.

Once I finish theirs, and set them on my working altar along with their pictures to send them healing energy, I’ll start making some to sell in my online stores.  I plan on donating 25% of the proceeds to Pahrump SNAPS, a wonderful local organization that is helping me get all my stray cats spayed/neutered for me.  They also provide discount shots for pets, which I took advantage of yesterday and dragged my 4 indoor cats down and got all their shots updated.  I helped fill shots for the vet, and will be volunteering once a month to help out doing it for them.

So although we have had a lot of heartache this past week, from our cats to my son (who is doing much better, and hopes to be out of the hospital today…I’m hoping my healing prayers have been helping), sorrow has spawned a craft idea that will help us raise money for a worthy charity, and raise money so we can continue to feed stray cats no one else would love but us.

This has been a labor of love of my husband and I. It started with “I’d love a candle holder that I don’t drip wax all over the carpet”. So I drew out what I thought would be a good design, and he carved it out of clay. Then we figured, heh, we could do a cauldron to burn incense. And a small salt holder would be good, and how about an altar tile too?

So he got to carving, then we made a mold for each item.

Then we experimented with different casting mediums. That was fun. We tried, I think, 4 different materials until we came up with what we liked best. After that, we started casting sets.

Unfortunately for him, we only have 1 candle holder mold, and the set requires 6 candle holders, so that slowed production way down. If these first two sets sell (I have one listed on Etsy, one on Ebay Unfortunately, we only made one altar tile for some reason, so only the one on eBay has the altar tile) then we will make more molds for the candle holders so we can pour more of them at once.

Then the fun started. My husband loves to airbrush things and spatter them to make them look aged. So we painted everything first, then took them and spattered them. The directional candle holders each have 3 colors spattered on them, and everything else at least two.

We hope to do more at once next time, as changing paints in the airbrush gets old when you are only painting a few minutes at a time, lol.

We finally finished them up yesterday night, and got the pictures all shot this morning. What do you think?

Here is the full set

here are just the candles from the first set

Close-up of cauldron in set one