Last Supper and the Mass presented for children

The Mass setting for the felt dolls with altar.

Some may remember my posting last year, where I showed how I made a felt doll set of apostles, Our Lady and the Holy Spirit for children to interact with in a catechesis setting.  If you did not see it, here is the link to my tutorial.  You can see below a photo of what I made.

To see closer detail, click on images to enlarge.

Felt apostle dolls with Holy Spirit and tongues of fire

So what this posting is about is the 'home' and 'setting' made for these dolls. The dolls were to be presented in a Last Supper or Pentecost setting (both being in the Upper Room) and then also a Mass setting (I'm yet to make the priest doll).

The Last Supper setting with Last Supper Table.

The first photo above is the completed Mass setting, that features the back wall of a church, with stained glass windows, statues and in the centre is the altar.

The photo just above is of the Last Supper setting, with three open windows looking out onto the Garden of Olives and the Jerusalem wall and Temple.  In the centre is the Last Supper Table.  The Apostles and Our Lord can be placed around the table for a re-enactment of the Last Supper.  It also can be used for the Pentecost scene, which took place in the Upper Room as well.  

This was not hard to make, it was not expensive.  I used 3 MDF boards (very cheap) and 2 metres or so of wood and a little bit of square doweling, some nails, a saw.  Other essentials include pencil, rubber, ruler, tracing paper and school acrylic paints.

 The picture you see above is the back wall, on one side I painted the Church scene, then I flipped it over and painted the Last Supper scene.  The back wall panel buts in between two strips of square doweling wood, that were nailed side by side length-wise at the back of the floor area, the spacing between the two pieces of doweling is the exact thickness of the MDF board, so it fits in firmly and does not move.  When you are packing the display up, you can take the back wall out all together.  Have a look at the photo below, you will see the square doweling at the base of the wall, I have painted it with 'stone brickwork' to disguise it's functional purpose.

The photo above is also a good shot to see how I made the altar/Last Supper Table, as they are one and same thing.  On one side I have painted a 'IHS' motif that you would often find on a Church altar.  On the other side, it is plain, so that it just looks like a wooden table.  The altar was made from left over MDF board, it features as the top of the table and the base.  In between the two pieces of MDF board is three pieces of wood, two are the same size, the third is slightly smaller, no really reason for that, just it gives a nicer appearance. The three pieces of wood were placed together (smaller piece in the middle) and then I nailed the MDF board on top of the 3 pieces and then flipped up side down, and nailed the MDF board base.  I painted it mission brown and then painted the IHS motif on the Church altar side.  The photo below features the altar side, front on.

The next seven photos, feature the painting of the Church side, back wall. What I did, was do an internet search on stained glass windows and Church statues.  I found a lovely Holy Spirit window image, saved it to my computer.  Then I found a lovely image of a set of 3 stained glass windows which featured the Crucifixion.  Then I found an image of a St Therese statue and St Francis Xavier, two Australian patrons, which often see in many Churches throughout Australia.

Here is a nice close up of the Holy Spirit/Trinity stained glass window, this one I drew free hand and painted it with simple, school acrylic paints.

Here is a close of the St Francis Xavier statue, with the statues, I printed up the images to the size I wanted to draw and paint them, but I mirror flipped them before printing.  The reason for mirror flipping was because I wanted to trace the statues and put onto the board that way, less chance of mistakes.  Then I painted them both to look like they were stone statues.

Here is the close up of St Therese of Lisieux.

You can see how I've drawn and painted the stone brickwork around everything, I used three different shades of grey.

When it came to the three stained glass windows set, I free hand drew the windows, the only thing I traced was the Crucifixion scene.  I changed a few little things here and there, in fact, I printed up two different stained glass windows, using the motifs out of the one and using the colour scheme and glass patterning, from the other.

  

A photo of the all the stained glass windows.

All finished, and ready to start on the reverse side ~ the Last Supper scene is next.

  

Here is the three windows looking out onto the Garden of Olives, the Jerusalem wall and Solomon's Temple rising above the walls.  I just did an image search of the Mount of Olives and came up with a photo that looked like what you see here.  Of course, the modern photo featured the muslim Dome of the Rock where you see Solomon's Temple in this picture!  So I did a search on what Solomon's Temple was supposed to have looked like and drew the top of it, where would normally be today, the Dome of the Rock.  You can see pencil pines and the olive trees in the forefront, laden with olives. 

In this photo you can get an idea of how I built the base.  It featured two big pieces of MDF board.  So I took the MDF board base, and nailed timber around the two sides and the front, I set them back from the edge by about a couple of cms (inch or so).  Then I nailed the top MDF board on top, which was to be painted as the stone floor.  The back side did not have a strip of timber nailed along it, as I wanted to use it as an opening to place the felt dolls for storage.  I used some left over MDF board to make a sliding door.  In this photo you can also see the second strip of square doweling, that holds the back wall firmly in place on the base.

 So, here they are finished and ready for use!  It is solid and very eye catching for children, hopefully for many years of use ahead in a catechesis/atrium setting.

My Scapular Craft ~ Two Hearts

If you saw my original posting My Scapular Craft, where I made my first scapular, (that you can see to the side) you would have also seen a photo at the end of another scapular that I had only just started, but not completed. This posting is showing you that newly designed scapular.

It is really important, if you wish to make this scapular, you MUST click the link above to learn how I constructed the whole scapular, this post is just showing you how I made my new design of the Two Hearts.

This one is simpler in design, no ornately embroidered vine/flower patterns around the edges, just the Sacred Heart on one side, the Immaculate Heart on the other. Between the mushroom background and the brown scapular is sewn all my special sacramentals ~ miraculous medal, St Benedict medal, Agnus Dei wax and a St Therese blessed rose.

All of the embroidery has been created with with one stitch style alone ~ a bullion stitch. I taught myself how to do it by finding a little online video, it's really quite simple, don't be put off by the complicated look it creates. I should say, that there is one other stitch used, a blanket stitch to attach the wool felt hearts and the little felt cross on the Sacred Heart, to the wool felt background, then it is used again to attach the mushroom felt background to the scapular itself.

Below is a copy of my great grandfather's Sacred Heart and the matching Immaculate Heart I designed a few years back, these images are my template for the hearts being cut out of felt, I print one of them to the right size for the scapular (so quite small) and then trace a template.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Blessed St Therese Petals Craft

I wanted to share our latest craft, that has enabled us to really look after the blessed St Therese roses we received on the feast of St Therese on the 1st of October and made it really easy and attractive for distribution.

Our choir was invited again for the second year to sing for the Carmelite sisters in NSW Australia. Here is the beautiful monastery that overlooks beautiful rolling hillside, even though it is in the centre of town. (A lovely town on a high ridge.)

My children had a simply wonderful day at Carmel.

Particularly my youngest.

My youngest boys were honoured to serve for the feast.

Here we are chanting the feast day Mass for St Therese.

What could be better? A spray of blessed St Therese roses in one hand, a little bag of goodies in another...

The tradition for the feast is the blessing of roses in St Therese's honour. Our children all went up after the blessing to receive a rose. They were all beautifully scented, home grown by the sisters are Carmel. We came home with a handful, the fragrance filled the car.

Once we got home, we carefully dried out the petals and stored them in a clip lock container, so that we could distribute the blessed roses to family and friends. I was thinking what would be the best way to give out this rose petals? I thought about laminating them, but I didn't like the idea of not being able to touch petal itself. So I came up with this craft I have photographed below, step by step.

I went to the craft store and bought a maroon sheet (looks a bit brown in this photo, but it is a beautiful wine colour) of mounting board. Mounting board is thicker than normal cardboard, it is the same thickness of sheet that would be used by framers to create boarders within a framed picture.
I looked at all the scrapbooking paper with beautiful colours and designs and wondered, just wondered if I would find what I was looking for...and I sure did!!! A BEAUTIFUL sheet of smoky pink paper with beautiful, fine markings of roses, flowers and leaves. Perfect!

I looked at all the cutters and found a lovely cutter in the shape of a flower..just what I needed.

So I cut the scrapbooking paper into rectangular pieces, 4cm by 3.3cm. I also cut the wine coloured mounting board into pieces exactly the same size, so they matched in size and shape. Then I took the cutter and stamped a flower out of the middle of the scrapbooking paper.

I flipped the scrapbooking paper over on it's back and took a little piece of a blessed rose petal and placed it over the cut out flower and used masking tape (paper based) to hold it down and secure it.
Then I glued the scrapbooking piece to the wine coloured mounting board, back to back. As you can see in the photo above, the middle piece is the front, where you can see the blessed petal. On the back (which you can see on either side, in the photo) I wrote with a lovely calligraphy pen, "Blessed Rose of St Therese 1 Oct 2011" All finished, nicely protected, yet the petal can be touched.

Here I have made 50 to send back to the Carmelite Monastery for distribution throughout the year. I have also made quite a few for myself, so that I can distribute to family and friends.

It is such a beautiful sight, all the petal colours and the really beautiful paper.

The girls and I had so much fun, choosing out the different petals to mount, trying to vary the colours...there were so many colours!

My youngest daughter had brought home from Carmel a beautiful blessed spray of miniature roses which we also dried out. You can see it below, on a little Our Lady of Guadalupe altar I have in my bedroom.
I love it, the spray sits perfectly on the little altar.

My Scapular Craft

A few years back I did some work on our scapulars, as I was tired of scapulars breaking, wearing out and having medals fall off, no matter how firmly I sewed them on. I had found some very strong, flat braid to replace the cords, which I sewed on, all the way around the scapulars themselves. I also slit open the backs of the scapulars and placed a blessed miraculous medal and St Benedicts medal inside, sewing the opening firmly together again. This has worked very well with us all, they do not break down and will last a lifetime through. I blogged about this endeavour, here.

I have in recent months been crafting with felt and found it a very easy and beautiful medium to work with. I have crafted religious dolls with felt. Also revamped our yearly Precious Blood craft with felt. I have many other projects in the pipeline, so as to speak, which I look forward to.

One of the projects that has been on my heart since working with felt, is making scapulars from completely from scratch. Making unique creations for each member of the family, for friends and relatives as gifts from the heart. Each scapular's design can be different, chosing religious symbols that are special to the individual person. As long as the scapular is made from 100% brown pure wool felt, there is no set image or design that must be used.

So I bought some 2mm commercially dyed 100% wool felt and cut it up into rectangles, 4.5cm x 5.5 cm (1.5inches x just over 2inches ). I also bought some beautiful hand dyed 100% wool felt to use like a 'blank canvas piece', slightly smaller than the brown wool felt, onto which I could embroider my designs. The colour of this felt could be any colour, my very first creation was being made for my eldest daughter's best friend, so I chose pink. I am presently making one for my mother for her birthday, it is on a neutral 'mushroom' coloured felt. Very light blue would be another popular colour to use. It also allowed me to create a 'pocket' between the two felts, where I could once again, sew in other sacramentals, securely.

Here is a photo of a piece of the hand dyed wool felt. It is a 'salmon' colour. Hand dyed felt has irregularities in colour often, which adds to the beauty and versatility of the piece. I wanted to use the commercially dyed brown for the back of the scapular, as I wanted uniformity of colour. For everything else, I was happy for colours with some irregularity. The piece you see above is what I bought to make my Sacred and Immaculate Hearts...when you see the images of the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart below I have used for my designs, you will see how the irregular colour suits the hearts perfectly.

I would prefer to use DMC cotton threads (6 stranded) but I cannot afford to buy alot, so I searched on ebay and found another brand of cotton thread that used the same code numbers and colours as DMC. I bought over 400 different colours for $60+ dollars, free shipping. The quality is not quite the same, but it is more than adequate, which is all that matters. I have the freedom now to make very good colour choices and matches in my designs.

I have been doing extensive image searches on the net for many different designs and patterns for my scapulars, I've been saving the images into a folder for future use. The sort of images I have been looking for is: miraculous medals, IHS, crosses, Lamb of God images, Eucharistic images ~ from this I hope to create many templates, so I can offer those I'm making the scapulars for, a choice of designs.

For my first scapular I chose a lovely feminine miraculous medal picture and a matching Sacred and Immaculate Heart that I had drawn many years ago.

Here is the holy card image that was the inspiration for the scapular. I shrunk the image down to scapular size, printed it up and traced around the medals to create my felt template, I always make these out of tracing paper. Except for the medals, everything else is embroidery work.

I have also embroidered the mirculous medal images onto the felt medals. For the side of the medal that has the 12 stars around the edge, I embroidered french knots. For the side that has Our Lady's image, I stitched a very simple pattern, considering how small the medals are, see my template below that I used. Where Our Lady's hands would be, I made little French Knots.

So here is a photo of the felt cut out, the image I shrunk down for tracing the miraculous medals template from and the very beginnings of my embroidery. For some people, the design I have there already is fancy enough and they won't want to go beyond that. The embroidery you can see uses three main stitches ~ buillion stitch (for the roses) I learnt how to do it, the day I embroidered it, it was that simple, I used this online tutorial to guide me. I used a daisy chain stitch for the blue forget-me-nots and green leaves. I used French knots for inside the forget-me-nots. Also a normal straight stitch for a little greenry between the flowers and leaves.

At this point decided to stitch the pink felt to the brown felt. I matched a cotton to the felt and used a blanket stitch, very fine and firm. I left the top unstitched, so that I could slip in an image of Mother of Good Counsel, on the back of the image I had typed up the St Anthony's Brief, in Latin and in English:

"Ecce Crucem Domini Fugite, partes adversae, Vicit Leo de Tribu Juda Radix David, alleluia. Behold the Cross of the Lord! Flee ye adversaries! The Lion of the Tribe of Juda, The Root of David has conquered, alleluia!"

This prayer is a powerful exorcism sacramental given to us by St Anthony himself, to read the story, click here.

I printed up a sheet with these images and prayers, cutting them out individually, placing them back-to-back and laminating them. If anyone would like a copy of this document sheet with the images and prayers, please email me. Once I had placed this sacramental into the space between the felts, I then blanket stitched shut the top. It will never come out. To re-enforce this further, I am soon to embroider all around the edges as well.

Here is a closer image of the scapular, you can click open any of the photos to get a better look.

Here is this side of the scapular now completed. I had 4 different coloured roses, pink, purple, yellow and orange ~ each rose has three shades of the colour. The darker colour in the centre, the next shade, in the middle and the lighter shade on the outside. Roses and forget-me-nots are classic Marian flowers, so very suitable for this miraculous medal design. I think next time I do this miraculous medal design, I will buy some gold thread to outline the miraculous medal and to embroider inside the medals.

Below is the images that inspired the other side of the scapular.

This is an image I drew, using pastels many years back, which was a replica of a very unique image of the Sacred Heart which was owned by my great grandfather. This was going to be my design for the embroidered Sacred Heart, I would also use the ivy pattern around edges as well.

I designed a matching Immaculate Heart to go with my great grandfather's Sacred Heart. I would embroider this Immaculate Heart and use the forget-me-nots around the edge.

Once again, I shrunk the images of the hearts down to the size of the scapular in order to trace the designs perfectly, to create a lasting template on tracing paper. Here is the two hearts cut and sewn with a fine blanket stitch.

I sewed the pink felt to the brown felt with a fine blanket stitch, leaving at this stage the top end of the pink felt open, so I could place a miraculous medal and St Benedict medal inside.

In case the scapular needs to be washed in the future, I've placed the medals inside a very small, plastic click-lock bag. Next time I will place one of the medals on one side of the scapular, and the other with the St Anthony's Brief, rather than having the two medals together. The medals have been blessed, with the St Benedict's medal receiving the special blessing it needs.

Here is a close up photo of the hearts finished. I have used the bullion stitch quite a bit. I've used this stitch for:

The crown of thorns on the Sacred Heart.

The wreath of roses around the Immaculate Heart.

The lower end of the sword that goes through the Immaculate Heart.

The wounds in the sides of both hearts and the drops of blood.

The flames on both hearts.

The vines.

I've used felt for the hearts, cross and 2 large vine leaves.

I've used 5 different colours in the flames.

Now that the two scapular ends were completed, I needed only to attach the scapular cord.

I am very blessed to have a big discount fabric and craft store in my area, here is a photo of one SMALL area of the braid area!!! Here I found the perfect cord for the scapulars, it is flat, thick and strong in chocolate brown.

Here is the braid attached and finished from the front.

Here it is at the back. When I took this photo I hadn't completed all the sewing of it, I had only sewn around the outside, but not the inside. With this task I bought special quilting thread in dark brown, it is very strong and durable thread that is needed for making this scapular last for a lifetime. I use a very fine, close set blanket stitch and I run the cord all the way around the edge of the scapular.

This is the first scapular of many to come. I hope to start working on new designs and will share them here as I go along. Below is a photo of the beginnings of my mother's scapular, which is coming along nicely.

If anyone has any questions about this craft, please feel free to email me.