Dawn Thebarge Hill

Nov. 30 2001

This is a reply to one of the email lists I am on. It is rather long winded but I thought it might be of interest to some of you crafty folks out there.

When creating this wand I first got a branch from a tree that is a friend of mine ;). It is a little crooked and some folks don't like that fact-but it is my want and I like it so tough. ;)  Any way, I left a little offering for my friend and thanked him for his lovely gift. I also was sure to cut the branch about 6 inches longer than I needed it to be when finished.

I cut the tip of the branch at an angle. I don't know why..it just appealed to me so I did it. Next I hollowed out the tip-I did this with both a jack knife and a drill fitted with a little dremel kind of tool that was round with little teeth on it..kinda like a mace-yeah I used power tools that looked medieval-LOL. I made the impression about an inch deep at its deepest point. The tip is cut at an angle so in order for the crystal to fit into it straight I made the bottom of the hole straight. This makes the hole any where from 1/3 to 1 inch deep.

I then inserted a long clear quartz crystal that I liked into the hole and glued it in place with a really strong epoxy-I filled the hole and then wiped off anything that came out of the hole once I squished the crystal into the glue since I wanted to be sure it was secure. Once the glue was totally dried I cut the end of the wand to correct length. I made it the length of my arm from under my arm pit to the tip of my middle finger. This is rather long...most folks say it should only be from your elbow to finger tip but this is what I liked and what felt right to me. I actually old it up further when I use it than most people do-I do not grasp it at the very end. There is a piece of smoky quartz on one side and a hematite on the other that I grasp (the smoky quartz is a perfect shape to hold against my thumb and the hematite fits against my palm-both great grounding stones-I really did not know this when I made this-it felt right so I did it). Any who...

I had many other stones (as seen in the photos). Some I bought, some I collected here or there (like the Herkimer diamonds that we went to NY to dig, garnets and smoky quartz from NH and the piece of sea glass from a beach here in CT , etc) and some kind of "came" to me. I used anything that appealed to me from hematite to smoky quartz, amethyst, amber, moonstone, garnet, turquoise, emerald, apache tear, obsidian, ruby, tiger eye, clear quartz,carnelian and others that I am not even sure of actually. If I liked it I added it to the pile. :) Any how I dug out impressions in the wood the same general shape as the bottom of the stone with the jack knife. It took quite a while to do this as I carved, fit, carved and refit and I did this over several days/weeks. I epoxied stones into place as I finished each carved out spot-I tried it by waiting to glue several at once and then had to play "jig saw puzzle" to try and remember which stone went where. LOL I suppose you could mark each impression with a number or code of some type as it will later be covered with the stone..maybe a magickal symbol for that stone or something you hope the stone could accomplish (this just occurred to me..I kinda wish I thought of it then).

The epoxy I chose to use was for strength and not really all that quick drying-I think it took 10 minutes to dry (not exactly instant but pretty fast) so I used masking tape to hold the stones in place while it dried. Any tape residue was easily removed with Goo Gone. Any oil would work just as well actually.

Next I took copper foil tape (it is used in stained glass work) and wrapped around the base of each stone and attached it to the base (the stick itself) as well. The copper foil tape is not very wide stuff-it comes in several widths but the one that wrapped around the odd shapes of the stones was quite narrow-like 1/4 inch. I used quite a bit making sure to cover up around the base of the stones and all around the wood as well. The tape I used on the branch itself was slightly wider if I could fit it between the stones as they are rather close together.

Then I took solder and soldered over the tape. I layered the solder so that it was kind of bumpy and ridgy and gave it texture and covered the tape over lapping so it did not look like a collage so to speak-the tape over laps showed until I did this. Next I used a black patina finish on the solder. You can get this in stained glass supply shops as well and it comes in several colors like copper, black and green (looks like aged copper patina).

Again this all took a long time. All told I probably worked for 3 to 8 hours over 10 to 15 days. I did not do this all at once. I think it really was not finished for like a year. I wanted to be prepared mentally and magickally when I did it so it was truly "mine."

This is only the way I did it. It is not something everyone will want to tackle. It just felt right to me when I was doing it and kind of evolved over time. I had no clue that I was going to solder anything when I started this. I kind of thought about just gluing things on really and wrapping them but had a couple things fall off in between work sessions and did not want to have to keep regluing things -plus the epoxy is a real pain to get off both the branch and the stone when you go to reattach anything. I know there are tons of other ways to do this kind of thing and not all people like epoxy. To me everything, even chemicals, have to come from somewhere that at one time is natural so I don't really worry about things like glues or epoxies not being natural.

If I can answer more questions on how I did this please don't hesitate to ask. :)

How I Created My Wand