Witch Ancestry - by Claudia

Merry meet! Porticia Crimpbottle here today (Claudia asked me to jump in as she is busy) to welcome you at the Calico Craft Parts blog.

I live in boring Kingsport (with my boring witch relatives) and I am one-hundred-and-twenty-five years old (which is quite young for a witch actually...you could say I'm in my mid-teenage years compared to normal humans...just so you get the idea...). I will count as a grown-up when I reach the age of one-hundred-and-eighty, but honestly being a grown-up isn't anything I am looking forward to. No fun, just liabilities and all that being reasonable and a role model for the youngsters....hah! If you knew Auntie Hapsack you would get a good example of the total opposite of a role model - and she is two-hundred-and-fifty-one!!!! (which is why I adore her to be honest).

Well, so much for grown-ups....but Claudia asked me to tell you a bit about my family and ancestors as she discovered the photo frame I made for Granny Prudence last year for Christmas and thought you might be interested in that as it is Halloween. I know that humans love Halloween and get crazy over everything that has to do with witches and witchcraft and all that stuff at that time of the year (even though I do not get what there is to be excited about really...if you knew any witches in person, you would know that there's nothing spooky or intimidating about us). I've known humans (from the home for the aged at the other end of our street for example) that were more spooky and weird than Grand-aunt Gwynneth - and that's saying something! She used to do that kind of spells where you need some baby's puke that had to be gathered at the light of the (exactly!) half-full moon and burnt in a bowl alongside the whiskers of a lame albino ferret and stuff like that...

She's the one in the picture in the bottom middle. She died some decades ago, but I still miss her kroaked voice and the cats in our neighbourhood all taking to their heels as soon as they could hear her shout (she was almost completely deaf in her last years, so she shouted all the time - which drove mum mad actually). I loved old Gwynnie - she knew how to spoil an (already boring) party.





The fancy lady to her right is a grand-aunt of my dad's. She liked to be addressed as "Dr. Eloise Thrumpton" (as she had married a country doctor - a human whom she outlived by about three-hundred years, but never
stopped missing dearly I was told). Dad told me he had to call her by "Auntie Doctor" - which I think is potty. She didn't heal people - on the contrary: she was fully into curses and other sinister stuff (I suppose poor Dr.Thrumpton never knew as he is said to have excessively adored her).


And just look at that absurd witch hat of hers! I would rather die than ever wear a thing like that!!!!



By the way...my dad - you can see him in the picture to the left (at the age of fourty-three). He says he hates pictures showing
him at that age because they made him wear that boys sorcerers hat that made him look like "a real Seppl". *) You see - that witch hat thingie is something that gives a lot of us a hard time actually. Fancy a cool modern hair style? Ah, forget it!!!

   Dad says boys' sorcerers hats at that time were less pointy than the girls' hats, because boys were supposed to do more of the outdoor stuff like climbing trees and doing other dangerous (I call it cool) things that might become even more dangerous when wearing a long pointy hat that could get entangled in thicket or poke out another boy's eyes or so...though I think they were just afraid that boys might damage a high, pointy hat faster than a short one).

To my dad's right is Aunt Cynthia. She lives right down our street and comes over to our house almost every day. I like her a lot, because she knows the most amazing old witches' songs and she always brings cookies that have one or the other "surprise" in them - she has already made some that exploded in your mouth, made you croak like a toad or puke swarms of glowworms. She says that the dress she is wearing in the picture looks white, but it was actually a "breathtakingly beautiful" pale death cap green-white - her favourite colour back then.

The younger girl to my dad's left is Aunt Mathilda, dad's younger sister. She ran away with another witch long ago. Every once in a while he gets a greeting card from her from a far off place from the other end of the world that she always signs "Luv U, nimrod! Mattie xxx". (She has only recently switched to the more modern spelling).
We are under no circumstances to mention Aunt Mattie when grandma is around! Dad hides her greeting cards in a trinket box out in his garage (and he thinks no one knows).




Grandma Olivia is the elderly woman in the picture. She hasn't changed a lot since the picture was taken about two and a half centuries ago...still droughty...still grumpy...always speaking about all the hard times she has got her children through without a man by her side. (Grandpa Alastair is said to have been killed in a sorcerers' fight. Not that he was killed by a disastrous spell - which would have been way cool a story to tell! But nope! They say he fell and got impaled by a fork when trying to walk backwards while casting an explosion spell to throw at his opponent).

My mum is the one in the middle in the picture to the top right - her two sisters Grace ("Auntie Hapsack", to the left) and Pernille at
her sides. I love my two aunties a lot - they're all only some decades apart - so they share the same interests - especially as they had all been at the same witches' boarding school. They giggle a lot when they meet (which sadly is only three or four times a year) and share the latest gossip. Auntie Pernille has just married - a real bloke if you ask me. Hubert Happenstett (what a name to go by!) - a thin, quiet guy who only uses spells to light the fire in the fireplace or make the morning newspaper hover in from the garden so he doesn't have to go outside. I will never understand grown-ups!

So, well...I guess that's it! Job done! Oh, no....Claudia also asked me to tell you how I made the picture frame.

I have used these Calico Craft Parts: 

- Halloween Multi-Frame - ApothecaryShop
- Eyeballs and Veins - Halloween Wood Corner
- Spider Dangling from Web MDF Wood Shape
- Vampire Bat Silhouette - MDF Wood Shape Style 4
- Skeleton Hand Bones MDF Wood Shape

alongside DecoArt media clear Crackle Glaze, white Antiquing Cream, Liquid Glass, fluid acrylics Titanium White, Titan Buff, Raw Umber, Carbon Black and Green Gold, Americana paints Black Plum, Lamp Black and Hauser Light Green and multi-surface paints NEON in pink and yellow. No witchcraft needed therefore to create a cool looking frame!

Merry part and happy Halloween!
Porticia Crimpbottle



*) Seppl, just in case you don't know, is Kasperl's best friend. Kasperl is the German version of Punch. My dad's sorcerers family came over from Germany in the early seventeen-hundreds. 
Seppl is wearing Bavarian leather shorts (at least dad didn't have to wear any of these!) and that silly looking hat and is as silly as Kasperl - only that he is not as funny. Nor is his silly Bavarian hat.