Crafts From Trash: Sun Gem

Crafts From Recyclables - Celebrating The Sun (project 2 of 5)

Crafts to make during the Coronavirus Stay-At-Home order

Pagans tend to be a very crafty group in general as they often make their own magical tools. This project that I present today is a very simple Sun-symbol gem for embellishing your hanging besom, your walking stick, your Faerie wand, or another magickal item.

As the theme of this craft-making effort (designated for me to do by a local coven) is to use materials that everyone already has on-hand to celebrate the coming Midsummer, I'm using tin caps found on various bottles to celebrate the Sun!

NOTE: it's important to pull in the Sun energy as you work. Ponder the seasonal aspects that are very relevant to celebrating this time of the year as you shape your art.

For this project, I started with the tin cap found on a bottle of Bacardi Superior Rum. I liked the idea that their logo is a night creature, the bat. The bat seemed to symbolize the much shorter aspect of our day/night balance this time of year and at Midsummer. The center logo is definitely not mandatory. You can make this project with a plane tin cap, as I show, below. 

DIRECTIONS:

1. To make a Sun gem out of a tin cap, get out a pair of wire cutters (or in some cases, a pair of scissors). Begin cutting evenly spaced grooves around the screw-portion of the rim. Be careful not to cut into the center/top. Make at least 5 evenly-spaced cuts. 

 2. Now cut each lip into a pointy triangle shape as shown.

3. Get to hammering! (Flatten out your *star*). The Sun is indeed a giant star in the sky and when you make a few of these tin stars and overlap them as shown, below, you end up with what looks more symbolically like a typical Sun-craft.

4. Paint each layer of tin-work as you desire. For making my Sun gem, I used a gold glitter nail polish. 

Here's yet another idea for crafting from tin can lids and other recyclables. Here I used two spent circular saw blades, a tin lid, and a tin bottle cap. Paint goes a long way for expressing yourself, creatively.