"Playing" Mass with Our New Mass Kit

My friend and household sister from college, sent me this awesome Mass kit that was made by another household sister.  I was so impressed with all the pieces that go with this kit.  There is a stole and a pall for EVERY liturgical season! Green, red, white, purple, and pink.  Liam loves to see what the priest is wearing and match him.  So cool! Also, this mass kit has all the parts labeled so it can be used as an effective teaching too (see below). 

I wish I had more ordering info for this Mass kit, but I don't know if my household sister is still making them.  If anyone is interested, I could probably round up her email address from someone who knows it.

And from our little photo session, I can give you three reason why women shouldn't be priests

1. Pink or purple vestments would be only colors ever worn.
2. The stole will only be worn as a scarf, wrapped around the neck in a fashionable manner.
3. The congregation will be distracted by bare bellies at every hand raising.

Store Open!

My store is open again for business!  God Bless you all!

All New Bead: Jesus Christ, Tree of Life!

I've wanted to make this bead for a long time: the Tree of Life.  I think the image of the tree is so beautiful and there are so many ways it can be used as a Catholic symbol.  The meaning that I am going to uses is Jesus as the tree of life.  In Genesis, chapter 3, God closed the garden of Eden so that no one would eat of the tree of life.  In the new testament, Jesus' sacrifice on the cross (or the tree) allows all of us to partake in the tree of life and gain eternal life.

Other meanings for this symbol could be the mustard seed, or the fruit tree parable.

Here's the process for this bead:

I used the leaves that I had left over from my roses on the Immaculate Heart bead to make the leaves in the tree.  This made the process go much faster!

I made the trunk, then arranged the leaves.  Putting the blue background clay in between all those branches and leaves took some time.

The completed cane waiting to be reduced.

The clay canes in their reduction stages.

The finished product!

New Angel Bead

I've upgraded my simple little angel and here's the new one. I didn't want this angel to be feminine.  If anything, I think if angels as more masculine.  Of course angels do not have genders, but even their biblical names are more masculine than feminine.  I was also thinking of my son, Liam, who has a fascination for angels.  I wanted an angel he would connect with, so I started with this sketch...

The sketch

Liam was soooo impressed my little drawing that he wanted to help with the whole bead. He's never been so interested in my bead work!  It was kind of flattering, actually.  He is very generous with his compliments :)

Here's the hardest part of the whole bead: The face.  It's not what I had in mind, but in the end, it didn't matter anyway.  In the small rosary beads, you can't make out any features in the face.  In the bigger bead versions, it looks my angel is singing.  That's not a bad thing. Most of the angels are singing before the throne of God without stop- so this is pretty accurate!

Then came the upper body...

The praying hands and arms- the second hardest part of the this bead. Kind of tricky!

The lower body...

And the part I had been waiting for- the majestic angel wings.  I knew this would be fun to do and it was!

Then I put on the blue background. I had hard time deciding whether to make it circular or square.  I decided on circular and I'm glad I did because I had just enough blue clay to make a perfect circle.

And here's what the kids got to with the babysitter while I worked- well, at least the last day that I worked on this bead....

Babysitter + her young brother + blow up pool and perfect weather = day 'o fun

The reduction process:

The final product... Yeah!

 

Now I'm on to my next bead...

Wrist Problems

This is not my hand. I get pretty tough on my clay. Plus, I have a lot of more it!

A very unfortunate thing has happened to my wrist to prevent me from working on my clay too much. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'm hoping my doctor can help to figure out a solution.  

Working with polymer clay is taxing on the hands and every time I work with clay too much, I can really feel it afterword.  But this time, it's more serious.  Last Friday, I was washing floors (on my hands and knees- the only way floors really get clean) when all of a sudden, I couldn't put any weight on my right hand.  A sharp pain in my hand prevented me from cleaning any more floors (this time, it's not a lie, hubby!).   The weird thing is that I can't even tell what it was that caused it.  It had been a few days since I had done any heavy clay work.  But, come to think of it, I did lift weights that morning with semi-heavy statues...maybe I should explain...

I was working out (the only time I get to work out is while on vacation- how sad is that?!) to this annoying workout video that my sister had gotten rid of because it was too annoying for her.  I think it was Dennis Austin.  Anyway, my mom was short on hand weights, but not on religious statues.  I grabbed two that felt about 3-5 pounds.  I should have known I would get punished for using holy statues as hand weights, and making a joke about my holy workout on top of it!.  I don't remember feeling any sharp pains while working out, so it might not have been it.  But I did spend a considerable amount of time in downward facing dog during the P90x cardio workout the day before.  That's a lot of weight on the wrists too. 

I'm forced to take it easy on my wrists, which means minimal clay work. They do feel somewhat better when I'm not putting a lot of weight of them.   I'm not sure I will be done with my beads by next week, which means no shop opening.   Hopefully with lighter use, my wrists will heal completely and I can resume clay smashing and down word facing dogs, but no more holy weight lifting for this girl!

Three Sacraments in 11 Days. Shop Not Up Yet

Jude is six months old now. He looks so old in this picture.

We're back from a totally fun and relaxing and much needed trip to Minnesota to visit my family and celebrate three sacraments in 11 days!  That's the good news.  The bad news is that my monstrance bead did not turn out,  and my shop will not be up and running until next week.  This week I will be working on making beads, to hopefully get things up and running sometime next week. 

Here's the Sacrament marathon in order:
My sister, Christina's, confirmation.  I am her lucky confirmation sponsor.  What an honor!

My sister being confirmed. I was her sponsor- what an honor!

Jude's Baptism with my brother Tom and my sister in law, Jo Ann as Godparents.  My dad, the deacon performed the rite, and all of my family was in attendance.  If you're wondering why Jude is being baptized without a shirt and no white garment, it's actually symbolic.  It wasn't supposed to happen this way.  For some reason, the traditional white garment bib thingy that you get at baptisms, couldn't be found anywhere, so instead of dressing him before the baptism, we dressed him after he was baptized in place of the white bib.  According to my dad, it's the way Baptism used to be done and it's more symbolic anyway because it's after baptism that the soul is made pure, hence the white garments. 

Jude being baptized without his white garments (see explanation above)

Yeah! Clean soul- free from stain of sin and white garments go on with help of Godparents

Yet another symbol- the MOVING.  We all moved from the back of church, where the baptismal font is, to the front of Church to symbolize the moving away from original sin/former life to new life in Christ!

My Goddaughter, Grace, had her First Holy Communion on Sunday.  How beautiful! I was so glad to be able to attend.

Grace, on her First Holy Communion