Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Modeling Your Magic

Sometimes you just can't buy the right magical implement at you local Five & Dime. Sometimes, the only tool for the job must be made. When this is the case I usually lower my head in despair because I am severely challenged when it comes to the arts. Luckily, I recently came across a quick and easy recipe for making a type of clay that can be readily shaped, dried, and painted. I am in the process of making some needed tools for my alter from this material and am finding it useful, ergo I am going to share it with you. Chances are that you have all the ingredients already in your home.


You will need:

1) A small cooking pot.
2) A stirring utensil.
3) Salt
4) Corn Starch
5) Rubber/latex gloves
6) 1 1/3 cups water
7) Measuring cup


Place 2/3 cup water and 2 cups salt into small pan on a stove, stir, and bring to a boil. The mixture should slightly liquefy and bubbles should form around the inside edges of the pan. If the mixture is too thick to boil, add a small amount of water. The mixture should be thick.





While you are waiting for the salt and water to boil, mix 2/3 cup water and one cup corn starch in a separate dish.






When the water/salt mixture bubbles, add the water/cornstarch mixture to the pan and stir until ingredients clump together. This happens quickly.






Remove the ingredients and knead the mixture like you would bread dough (Umm, need I say the mixture will be hot. Wear some protective gloves!)






Total yield is about 1 1/2 pounds of clay.









Just a tad bit smaller than a grapefruit (of course you can increase or decrease the amount of ingredients depending on the job you need).






Form the clay into whatever it is you need. Just for fun, and demonstration purposes, I made a quick human-like figure and a candle holder. (I told you I was artistically challenged!)



I have recently made a spirit house/fetish and a negativity/spell trap using the above recipe ( I will be blogging about these two items in the next few weeks). It took about 4 weeks for the items to dry and harden enough to paint.

So, get your ingredients together this weekend and make some magic!