If I'm being honest with myself, this post really began about nine months ago when J finally convinced me to watch a few episodes of Supernatural with the sales pitch, "It's a show about two attractive brothers who cry and punch each other. Oh yeah, and they hunt monsters." So, J was out of town and I thought I'd give it a chance. A few days and seasons later, I was obviously incurably hooked. Although I arrived about 8 years late, Sam, Dean, Bobby and Castiel kept me company all summer and I was caught up before season 9 began. It's my guilty pleasure, and for those of you out there who understand my recent obsession, WOPC presents our homage to the Winchesters!
To make your own hunter's kit, it helps to be a pack rat for certain strange objects. Much of this kit we already had in storage somehow. We began with a sexy cigar box I picked up at The Outlaw Cigar Company. Sometimes, when I go with someone who is purchasing cigars, they even let me take empty boxes for free! (I really should write them a nice note.)
The importance of this box was that it needed to be deep enough to hold a random assortment of bottles, relics and the like. I lined the bottom with a piece of black felt to cushion the bottles and add some class.
Next we made a list of all the different items we could possibly include in the kit. Some were crossed off for expense reasons, others for lack of interest. If you'd like to include a wooden stake, holy oil or a bottle of dead man's blood, be our guest. They just weren't our first choices. The final list sent us scouring through our stash for fun bottles and creepy elements.
Beginning with the bottled elements, you'll notice we have a penchant for fancy glass bottles. Two are alcohol minis with the labels soaked off; Lemoncello for the salt and Chambord for the holy water respectively. The salt is sea salt, so as to have some texture and look interesting. The small rosary around the holy water is a plastic detail used for scrapbooking. It was supposed to go on a scrapbook page about J's production of Nunsense, but seeing as how that was years ago and I still haven't created the page, I cannibalized the boring project for one more interesting. My favorite thing about this bottle is the lid. Who knew a Chambord bottle could look so religious?
The third bottle is very tiny and can be found at a craft store, usually in the jewelry section. It holds our phoenix ash. Although it only appeared in one episode, the episode was one of our favorites, so we had to include it. We created the ash by burning wood shavings from a large dowel. We used a makeshift "pan" made out of aluminum foil to make sure we didn't burn the house down and didn't lose any of the ash.
The top of the bottle is stopped by a small bead we had leftover from the Pick of Destiny necklace project. It looks like pumice, so we felt it was indicative of the fire needed to create the ash. J made sure to superglue the bead such that the hole is useable if someone wanted to wear the bottle as a charm.
The next element we created was the hex bag. This involved using scraps of fabric and leather, dried sage, and chicken bones we keep on hand. That's right, I just said we keep cleaned and dried chicken bones on hand. We're not creepy at all! J used a chemical process he found online to clean bones from a rotisserie chicken a while back. The original idea was to cast the bones for use in jewelry projects, but this is the first time they've come in handy so far. We'll keep you updated if we do anything more with them.
J tattered the fabric, chose his bones carefully, and tied the contents up with a leather cord. Overall I am both impressed and terrified with his ability to make hex bags. I may need to keep a closer eye on his extracurriculars.
Once we got a clean and sexy image, I cut it out and glued it into the metal blank with my favorite Scotch glue. We gave it a day to dry and then filled the charm to the brim with resin using a disposable pipette. The pipette allowed us to carefully add resin until the surface tension was convex. We then used a lighter to heat the surface of the resin to clear the charm of bubbles. As you can see, it didn't remove all of them, but it's decent for a first try.
The rest of the items in the box were found/purchased for this specific project. The cross is from a Lutheran youth retreat I attended in high school. (No the humor of its use is not lost on me.) The .45 casings were purchased from Etsy shop, Ballistic Jewelry, for use in craft projects. Unfortunately, they aren't Winchester casings...though I'm sure if you searched hard enough you could find some. Although it's missing from the photos, we are also including a piece of chalk in the kit, and are currently toying with the idea of including a handwritten document of signs and sigils.
So, there you have it! We've pieced together our very own hunter's kit. It doesn't come close to equaling the trunk of the Impala, but it may work in a pinch until you can call the Winchesters for help. There's a lot of room for more items and as true fans of the show, we'd love to see what others think of this kit and what they've added to their own. We're also planning a few more Supernatural fandom posts in the future, so stay tuned!
This is awesome my girls just gotten into going on these ghosts hunts so was looking for a DIY kit I could make as we both love supernatural!
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