How do you celebrate Imbolc? When my kids were itty bitty, we would shake bells, play drums and dance. Now that they are school-aged, I wanted to give them a sense of the other meanings of Imbolc. It’s a time to gather your energy before you plunge into any projects or creative endeavors for the year.

This year we are making affirmation ornaments to adorn our Seasons tree. (What’s a Seasons tree? For us, it is a wire tree that was meant to display ornaments at Christmas. We put it us when our Christmas tree comes down and decorate it throughout the year as the seasons change. It’s new to our home this year, so we’ll see if we can keep up with it).

Supplies:

• Air dry clay
• star shaped cookie cutter
• Mod Podge or white glue
• gold glitter
• ribbon
• tacky glue or hot glue
• permanent marker

As Imbolc is a fire holiday, I picked stars for our ornament shape. You can purchase wooden stars from your local craft shop, make them out of salt dough or air-dry clay, or cut them out of paper.  I made mine out of air dry clay rolled out and then I cut the stars with a cookie cutter. I let them dry for a few days before I moved on to the next step.

Once your stars are ready, write what you are hoping to learn or accomplish in the coming seasons.Writing down your goals is a way to focus your energy into your plans (and for myself if I don’t write it down, it doesn’t get done). If it’s private, then just write the first letter of each word, or draw a symbol on the star. Next, turn them over and coat the blank side with some Mod Podge (or white glue), and shake gold glitter on the wet glue. Why gold? Because it’s pretty! Also yellow is the color of Air, which is the element of Spring and then I can leave the stars up through midsummer.

After the glue has dried, I like to go back and do a second coat of glue and more glitter. You can always skip that and move on to the next step.

Using hot glue or tacky glue, glue a ribbon loop to the back for hanging. If you REALLY don’t want others to read your affirmation, you can always glue the ribbon tails over the top of your writing.

Let your glue dry, and then hang your stars where you will see them every day.

A blessed Imbolc to you and yours!