Hockey gods, have mercy!

Those of you that know me well know that I make little appeals to the hockey gods on a regular basis. And it usually works - they gave us nice weather for the Wildcats BBQ, they gave us a lovely home win to start the season, and they gave the baby Canucks the opportunity to stick their tongues firmly out at the Oilers' starting line up :)

I need to make sure they remain appeased, however, so that results like a 4-0 loss to Telford are few and far between - and to this end I've been meaning to make this little shrine for ages...

And as luck would have it - a new challenge blog was launched this week, with a shrine-making competition for starters - and a nice prize too.

So that was all the incentive I needed. That and the fact that I was doing some work-work from home (in the evening I hasten to add, I wasn't slacking off during the day, oh no siree), and it involved me running queries that went off and thought amongst themselves for 20 minutes at a time. I SHOULD have used those 20 minute breaks to do housework, really :) But making my little hockey shrine was MUCH more fun.



The shrine base is a little masonite kit that I bought from the Retro Art Cafe - a lovely little online shop that I can thoroughly recommend as, not only does it have a super cool range of products, but also Kristin who is the head honcho there, is very nice indeed.

It makes a nice dimensional shrine with various layers to add interest.

Unusually for me I have used patterned papers to decorate it rather than paints and inks and stamps - they are all Basic Grey from the Archaic range. I did use a bit of gold and copper leaf and pearl ex too though.

The rusty star at the top is also from Retro Art Cafe, and the sprocket thing is Tim Holtz.

And the skates stamp is one of my huge collection of hockey related stamps that I feel compelled to buy whenever I see them, but never actually use, so I'm glad I got to use them on this :) The skates were stamped with dark brown ink, watercoloured, and then clear embossed a few times, and adhered to the shrine raised on foam squares, above a gold leafed halo.

And the stand for the shrine? Yes, that's a real puck :) And the inscription reads "hockey gods have mercy!", on olive coloured dymo tape from Around The Block, scuffed up a bit with olive Stazon ink applied with the edge of a credit card.

I enjoyed this a lot - I think I shall keep this on my desk at work, for lunchtime prayers :)