frida sugar skulls

I did a post on sugar skulls in September. It was my first attempt and the icing situation was really sucky. Plus, I was using these skulls from Martha S. that I bought at Michaels. They were fine, don't get me wrong, but I don't know. I wanted more.

Yesterday, I went to my favorite store in Philadelphia, the Eye's Gallery. (Well, in competition with the Architect's bookstore) I went in after a long day seeing my father and driving driving driving. I went in to buy a full skeleton for my altar. I ended up purchasing two skeletons and a milagro of eyes, since St. Lucy is always pictured with her eyes on a platter.

Anyhow, whilst there, I noticed a table filled with the ingredients and tools to make sugar skulls--molds, meringue powder, gel food coloring, even the baker's bags for icing. I bought some food dye and thought I would give it another shot. This time I bought Frida Sugar Skull molds. They are also available on Mexican Sugar Skull.com

 There is a more detailed recipe on the package, which helps immensely. So, first, one teaspoon of meringue to one cup of sugar. Then sprinkle the mixture with one teaspoon of water. Mix it with your clean hands. It says to mix it for four minutes to get it consistent, and that seemed about right to me.

 

You fill them with the mixture. You know it is done because it is like wet sand, and you can press your finger into the mixture and the impression stays.

 

Then press it into the molds, like it is brown sugar. Pack it down hard.

 

Then, use a piece of cardboard to back the molds and flip it over. 

Your sugar skulls now have to harden for eight hours. Which is why I did these around 6p and waited until morning, and different lighting to make the royal icing and decorate.

I feel like this is a good time to tell you that everything you are making here is edible. It just doesn't taste very good, particularly Royal Icing and red gel food coloring, but technically you can eat it.

Royal icing is very easy to make. It is particularly important to use gel food coloring. That is what ruined my last batch of sugar skulls, the liquid food coloring. So, this is the recipe which makes a shitload of royal icing--one pound of confectioner's sugar and 1/4 cup of meringue. Add 1/3 cup of water. Mix with a hand or standing mixer for about nine minutes, until there are peaks.

I decided I wanted five colors and so I split it up accordingly. Added some gel food coloring, which comes in these little containers. I then put them in ziploc sandwich baggies. Don't fill it too much or it will split. I think cut the smallest little corner. I mean, really small. Almost too small to see. In fact, use a magnifying glass.

My icing baggies are ready, the skulls are lined up. Then you begin the decorating. You can use sequin, little jewels, whatever you choose. The royal icing will dry to cement like hardness. You need to let it dry though. And the food coloring, like all food coloring, dyes everything. My fingers are a technicolor wonder

I loved this project. So much fun. These Frida molds are wonderful with all the flowers and fun you have the liberty to create within its bounds.

Each one is different than the next. I love this one of marigolds.

 

I love the touch it brings to my ofrenda too. Homemade color. Can't wait to see your sugar skulls. xo

Día de los Muertos Altar

This week on still life everyday, I am going to be writing about different Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, projects. Día de los Muertos is a Latin American holiday that celebrates the dead and the ancestors. Celebrated November 1 and November 2, it coincides with All Saints Day and All Souls Day. (Did I get those in the right order?) Did you know that in Mexico, November 1st is referred to as Día de los Inocentes ("Day of the Innocents") but also as Día de los Angelitos ("Day of the Little Angels") and November 2 as Día de los Muertos or Día de los Difuntos ("Day of the Dead")? Yes, that means that November 1st is a day set aside to honor children and babies who have died.

I think we all knew that deep within us, which is why we connect with Día de los Muertos so viscerally.

Dia de los Muertos Ofrenda from 2010

Anyway, this week, I am going to share with you some projects I will be doing this week. First, I have created my Día de los Muertos ofrenda, or offering, or altar if you will. This might be a little more detailed than you want, but I am going to share how I got from point A to point semi-finished. And I say semi-finished because I am going to be working on projects all week to add to my ofrenda that I will share with you, then I will post the final altar picture.

This year, I was kind of stupefied by where I was going to put my altar. I have traditionally always used a small Shaker table I use for my altar, and it gets filled quickly. So I wanted to go bigger, or more self-contained. My husband is a woodworker by hobby, and I thought I might use some scrap wood and building something. I also was referring to the book Day of the Dead Crafts (You need to buy this book, if you don't have it already). In this book, there are a few ofrendas that use a painting as the centerpiece or theme of the ofrenda, and I wanted to do that.

I have been wanting to paint something not jizo or Zen or Buddhist, but that touched my Catholicism and love of Catholic art, in particular ex-voto or retablos. Latin American and Catholic art do death really well. It is part pathos, part horror, part worshipful, but all real life. Exaggerated and dramatic and beautiful in the way it embraces the darker sides of life. Ex-votos are paintings of tragedies and deaths with a pleading to a saint or gratitude for intercession. Like a visual prayer, it exemplifies the chaos of praying in suffering. In my humble opinion. Frida Kahlo painted a lot of these works. A retablo is a painting of how a saint or the Virgin. It may or may not depict the way the saint was martyred. I have been particularly intrigued by them because I have been re-discovering my saint books. I love this one by Giselle Potter called Lucy's Eyes and Margaret's Dragon. Giselle Potter is such a distinctive illustrator and her work is beautiful in this book. It is mostly illustrated. You need to check it out. It is a bargain book on Amazon.

I am frustrated because I wrote this post, then somehow deleted everything but the first paragraph.
So bear with me here.

Anyway, I sketched very little. Just a vague idea then, painted for an afternoon. I loved painting this work. It is exactly the way I had envisioned it, and a perfect centerpiece for my ofrenda.

The Stillbirth of Lucia, acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20"

Part of the inspiration of this piece and the entire ofrenda really is this comment that a nun said during a spiritual retreat I attended in June. She had been sexually abused as a child, and she became an alcoholic later in life. She said that she thought God abandoned her when she was being abused. But after she went into recovery, she realized that God was crying with her. And that was such a powerful statement to me. Because when you lose a child you hear often about God's plan, and it is hard not to take God's plan personally. I just don't like that phrase, but I like the idea that God mourns with us when we are grieving. That He couldn't intercede, he could only stand beside us and abide.

I have painted myself a few times holding Lucia in hospital gown. One for the sketchbook project. One in this painting featured on Exhale. I know this sounds weird, but there is something so hobo about that image that I like. I'm wearing borrowed clothes (hospital gown) in slouchy socks, holding a dead baby. It is all so stark and exactly as it happened, but more so. More stark. Horrifying. More lonely. I think it is like when we say our baby is DEAD instead of talking in euphemism. This is what happened. I gave birth to her. She was dead. I held her wearing ugly clothing, my ass hanging out. It didn't seem right.

In this painting, though, I found myself shrouded, mourning, beautiful. That is the forgiveness coming through, years of getting used to her death, possibly. And I don't think it was a mistake I came out looking like Mary. I like that ambiguity--is it me or the Virgin? I also always wanted to capture the redness of the lips of my baby. I think anyone who gave birth to a stillborn child remarks on it. It is unnerving and lovely. I wanted our lips to be the only red things, but after I painted it, I had this urge to paint a big sacred heart in the field of yellow. I will show you later how I solved that.

Alright, enough of that. I had the centerpiece, now what? Like I said, I began sketching altars, large wooden pieces--shadow box and shelves with traditional Catholic imagery, but then I went to the basement and saw this mirror that was here when we bought the house. It was moldy along the bottom where our basement flooded, but had some cool woodcarvings I thought I could nick, then I took the mirror off. I found this odd picture and a Fender Jazz Bass authentication label. I think I might take Kristin's advice and use it as inspiration for my NaNoWriMo novel. (Still need a plot, people.)

Once the mirror was off, I saw that I could use it as is. I cleaned it up and it looked pretty cool. I thought about knocking the back out, and creating a shadow box with different levels for display, but in the end, I kept it as is.

And I also now have a cool carved mirror which I might paint some day with roses and thorns and a sacred heart or something. You can see Thor in that mirror

I had intended on building a base for the frame so it could stand alone, but it had very heavy duty hanging wire and could support weight, so I went in another direction all together. I also found a lovely spot for my ofrenda--my dining room sideboard. I hung it. In that space in the yellow field of the painting, I hung my large sacred heart milagro.

I then decided to make differing levels. I went into my husband's workshop and found this raw edged, round sawed piece of wood that my stepfather gave us. He thought we could make a bench out of it, but we just hadn't really gotten to it. It looks awesome in this capacity. I used terrine jars to prop it up.

I forgot to mention that I used an antiqued sacred heart image for the top of the frame. It looks cool, not wonderful, but okay. I liked the terrine jars holding up the shelf, but wanted to fill them with something. Not having any marigolds (and unable to find them in the local nurseries around here) I decided to decapitate the mums I had outside my house. They were dying and in the jars they look lovely and intentional.

I then found a nice piece of slate from our fireplace project and used that for my old wood carved Virgin of Guadalupe. I bought her in Mexico and her rays have broken off through the years, but I still love her fiercely.

At this point, it was about bringing in some lighting. I had these flower lights from Beatrice's tea  birthday party, so I hung them around the frame. I also found a cross that I bought from Peru, which I hung from the middle of the mirror frame. And I decided to make a fabric sign for my ofrenda that reads, "El Senor lloro conmigo" (forgive the lack of tildes and accents in that sentence) which means "The Lord Cried with Me." (I moved the Virgin so you can read it in the picture below.) I actually had old sheets in the basement and this light blue one was rough and looked like sack cloth, so I ripped it into shreds and wrote this on it.

Then it was a matter of adding the beautiful things. I added four votive candles each with a milagro in them. A large Virgin of Guadalupe candle. A rosary given to me by my great-grandmother which was made my a blind nun. The death announcements, photographs and prayer cards for my grandmother, grandfather, great-grandmother and aunt. Lucy's picture. Harry's pictures (my father-in-law). Family Catholic Prayer Missals from the 50s which were my grandmother and grandfather's.

I put a wine glass of water out, in my favorite wine glass. Maybe I am mourning my drinking too. A black clay vase and paper flowers that Sam and I bought on our honeymoon to Sayulita, Mexico. I put a silver bowl my mother bought me from Mexico with a nice towel and some Nag Champa soap, which is making this entire ofrenda smell amazing.

On the other side of the ofrenda, I put a wooden bowl of fruit. We always keep our fruit in a bowl on our sideboard, so that was always there. There is also an incense holder.

Conspicuously missing from my ofrenda are calaveras, particularly when last year, that was all there was, no? That wasn't intentional, but I think I am going to either make or buy some full skeletons to hang on either side of the painting. And I will be making some sugar skulls this week for the ofrenda. I love the rustic earthy charm of this year's ofrenda. Also grateful to not have spent any money this year. I just wanted it to be home-y comfortable and lovely.

What does your ofrenda look like? What do you think should be added to my ofrenda?

the talking stick

As we approach Mabon, or autumn equinox, we always consult our favorite book for earth-centered celebrations called Celebrating the Great Mother. It is just a lovely book with guided meditations for children and crafts around the seasonal changes and pagan holidays. It has recipes for your feasts, and ideas for decorating your altar.

Mabon is next week, and we have begun preparing by creating our autumn table, which will be added to on the equinox. But for now, we have the staples.

We have recently moved our altar to an old Shaker table next to our fireplace. I'm not sure how long it will be there, but at least until we light our first fire on Mabon. We always have Lucy's candle, local wildflowers in a ceramic vase, salt, sage, a bowl of water, a meditation gong, the Buddha, a mizko jizo, a crystal and a piece of amethyst, incense and for autumn, we like to cut apples width-wise which creates a beautiful star right in the center of the apple. If anyone is interested, I can share the meaning of these items, but otherwise, I will assume you know what each piece is on there for. The other rather large thing in the middle is not a wand, but a talking stick.

 The talking stick is something we started last Mabon. It is an activity in the Celebrating the Great Mother book, and we loved it. We were using this beautiful carved driftwood that Ines sent us (see left) as our talking stick, but we kept an eye open for a new talking stick that we could create together as a family for our family. The idea of the talking stick is that it is a piece for the entire family to create. The talking stick is a way to hold a meeting, I believe, in some native cultures, but in a family, we use it as a way to introduce the idea of patience, good people skills, sharing and listening. We found our talking stick this summer. We think it was part of an old chair we were throwing out, but it ended up being perfectly cut in our walkway, and it looked like a talking stick. We wrapped the stick in leather strap. Beatrice sanded it and waxed it with beeswax. We are keeping our eyes open for a feather for the talking stick and maybe something with which to decorate it. In general, though, the talking stick can change, morph and grow according to your family. I know ours will be more decorated when Beezus gets more interested in it, as has happened with everything in our family.

As a family, we sit in circle most evenings after dinner. We light the candle and talk about our day, or read stories, or just wrestle. We drink tea. Thor bounces up and down demanding tea after dinner. (peppermint or chamomile tea harvested from our tea garden with a little sugar and lots of milk.) So does Beatrice for that matter. The talking stick is introduced on certain days, like Mabon, or a birthday. But some nights, like tonight, just when we are feeling gratitude. I thought I should write about it, because it has become a wonderful part of our family time.

Usually we smudge our space with some sage, and bless each person with the smoke. To bless each person, a parent takes the lit and blown our sage stick with a bowl under it to each person. Each person, big or little, takes the smoke from the sage and washes it over themselves. Sometimes I say to each person as they bring the smoke over themselves, "Sacred smoke, cleanse my spirit and make me ready to accept love." We say a prayer of love and gratitude that we are together, and then each person takes a turn holding the stick. When it is your turn holding the talking stick, you get to speak. Only you. No one is allowed to interrupt you, or comment. We all must listen and sit in circle. Thor usually sits on my lap. Because Beezus is so young, she usually talks about what she is thankful for, or what she is upset about (her brother stealing her polar bear Umi). Thomas kisses the talking stick, usually. But it is a great way to start the tradition of talking as a family and having time where everyone is listened to and heard.

If there is a problem, we use the ceremony to hear the issues, then afterward, we sit and talk about solutions. Hope this gave someone an idea for an evening ritual and way of connecting. This evening, I felt so much peace and love after our circle that I realized I had never really wrote about the talking stick and the way it has become part of our daily lives.

09.24.10

Mabon Altar.












Mabon centerpiece and Autumn Equinox dinner.

Candle's out.

Custom Jizo bookmark.
making this moved me a great deal and I wanted to share it.

The backside.

Another joyful jizo bookmark.