I am not alone in the group of those who are not artistically endowed. I cannot draw to save my life, but I have a good eye for colour and placement. I can find the perfect patterned paper for a creative page to record a spell. I can look at seed packets and see them as embellishments for gardening entries in my Book of Shadows.
Many of us have seen beautiful Book’s of Shadows. We’ve seen them in person made by that really talented witch, or even on TV or in a movie. We get home and take a look at ours and think (at least I do) “I really wish my book could look like that!” Well here are some simple ideas to get you started. You can use these ideas going forward, but you can also go back to previous entries and add to them.
If you have simple ideas for BOS embellishments please share them with us!
- Never underestimate the power of stickers. You can always find seasonal stickers at the craft store and many dollar stores. Leaves, snowflakes, flowers etc. My Yule ritual has snowflakes dancing all over the pages in the form of stickers.
- Scrap booking embellishments. These go beyond stickers. Some of them are made of fabric, some are 3D, and some have feathers, glitter, buttons, and ribbon. I will suggest a note of caution with 3D embellishments: they do make it hard to write on other pages because they make the surface uneven. However, there is nothing to stop you from using sheets of paper, cutting them to size, writing the spell on them and gluing them into the book.
- Another scrapbooking embellishment that I find fabulous are the sheets of patterned or coloured paper. These you can cut to suit your design needs, you can layer them, and cover notebook covers to make them unique. There are countless possibilities. I actually found this great “Witch Scrapbook Supplies” book that had some pretty cool pages to add to a book of shadows. Here are some of the pages the book came with:
- If you enjoy taking pictures, go out and take pics of trees, flowers, insects, birds and animals. You can even cut out the shapes and glue those into the book.
- Can’t take pictures? Grab some magazines. From National Geographic to cottage country, they are full of nature pics and you can cut those out and paste them in.
- Even something as simple as writing out the entry in a colour of ink that matches the association of the subject is great. For example a solar ritual could be written out in gold or orange. (You can find metallic markers in craft stores).
- Gather flower petals and press them. Once the pressing process is complete you can stick them into your BOS. This is a delicate process and takes patience. There is very thin and slim photo tape that works well for adhering them to paper.
- You can also stick in pieces of fabric with pleasing patterns or ones that correspond with the entry. This works great for borders around the text or the edges of the paper.
Here are a couple of pages from my own Book of Shadows
Be on the look-out for materials that can be used as embellishments. Even beautiful wrapping paper you received a gift in can work. It’s all about looking at things from a different perspective!
Send me some pics of your pages and I’ll post them.
Happy crafting!
Many blessings,
Lady Black