Better Late than Never

February 11th is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. However, this year, the feast occurred on a Sunday so we kinda lost track of it. But, we were planning to visit the Lourdes Marian Center here in Denver for a field trip today. That fell through, but we went ahead with the craft we'd planned -- holy water fonts for Our Lady.

A bit of foil, some Sculpey in shades of blue and white, some polished garden gravel and an image of Our Lady and St. Bernadette and VOILA!

We used the foil -- which we'd shaped into a shallow bowl and an upright area for the image of the apparition at Lourdes. We covered the foil shape with a thin layer of Sculpey, using the foil as a mold (you can see the foil on the back in the pictures). Once the foil was covered on the front (making sure to avoid holes or gaps -- which of course would leak!), we imbedded small rocks to give the feeling of the Lourdes Grotto.

After baking in a 275 oven for 15 minutes or so, we let the "grotto fonts" cool and carefully removed the foil. Many of the rocks came unstuck as the fonts dried, but we'll glue those back into place.

Once the fonts were cool enough to handle, we glue the trimmed apparition picture to the font and once that has set for a while, we'll seal the entire piece with matte varnish.

Now we're ready for that holy water! We're trying to reschedule the trip to the Center for next week -- Ash Wednesday!

One of the best parts of this activity was that we did it in company with another homeschool family -- after sharing heart-shaped pizzas, cranberry juice (which wasn't quite as red as we would have liked) and Valentine's Day cookies!

Mary M, y'all can come over to play anytime!