Going outside to collect ingredients for potions in the winter. We find a lot of great options, slight to my surprise, and have fun making them up when we get home.
Saturday 11 January. Weather: dry and cloudy. Temperature: 4°C
B’s been making potions at school this week. She came home one day with a beautiful mini glass corked bottle filled with a purple liquid with glitter in. I’d been toying with getting her out to the local park today but give her the options.
Me: What do you want to do, go to the park and get the rest of the lights down or collect potions ingredients.
B: Potions!
I was hoping she’d say that. I want to have a go too. The night before she was explaining how she’d made hers and they’ve put cotton wool in the middle to make a sort of swirling look. I reckon we can easily find things outside that have similar effects.
We grab a basket and a trug and two pairs of scissors and gloves. I go out to the local bit of ground a fair bit to cut grass for our rabbits (spoiled things that they are) and we decide we’ll head out that way. We don’t get far. As soon as we’re out of the gate we’re seeing lots of options. I wasn’t sure we’d find much in January but I was wrong.
The ground was full of old chestnut husks (where the nut had been eaten or decomposed and just the outside was left). There was also some holly bushes with leaves in different colours. Lots of grasses and weeds of course and lots of sticks and plant bits on the ground which had interesting textures. The hedges had the remains of the summer blackberries.
We had fun with moss as well, digging it up and cutting it into patterns. We found old leaves which had been partly worn away leaving a brown lacy structure too. We also filled out baskets with holly and pine needles, the outside spiky casings of conkers and lots of snippets of green weeds. The prize find was an old coconut shell (possibly put out with bird seed in).
B loved using her gloves and scissors to cut bits off and arrange them nicely in the basket. She was happy getting one of most things and spent some time working out the best one and throwing away the rest. I’m an instinctive collector and wanted lots of each.
Once we had a good general selection we headed home and dug out B’s potion making set. Copying the school’s method, we started off filling glass jars half way with water, then adding cotton wool, food colouring and bits we’d gathered from outside. The moss and the grasses looked particularly spooky. Then we tried different methods using pale dried out bits of plant and twig instead of the cotton wool.
It was really fun. Inevitably we reached into the craft cupboard as well and added in glitter and bottle tops and lots of food colouring. We ended up with some beautiful bottles which I suspect will stay out for a while before we throw them away. We lit candles behind them and they looked cool and spooky (one to bring back next Halloween maybe?).
