Tea & a Craft for St. Agnes

Tomorrow is the feast of Saint Agnes of Rome, who died a martyr at 13 in the early fourth century. She is the patron of purity and is usually pictured holding a lamb. We spent some time this afternoon reading about her and preparing a little craft in her honor ... but the tea will have to wait for tomorrow. :)

Thanks to Kathryn and Gwen at 4Real, I learned these flowers are called St. Agnes's Snowflakes, and that they are closely related to the Snowdrop, one of my favorite garden flowers. (Not that I have any growing in my garden at present - though I hope to very soon.) And thanks to this book, I learned that snowflakes (as in frozen water!) were once called St. Agnes's flowers! Well, this was too lovely a connection to pass up, even though - or maybe especially since - we've had so little snow this year. I wanted to plan a craft around snowflakes for this feast, and found just the right one in, of all places, my grocery store flyer!

It was just what I was looking for - easy, quick, and, happily for me, very glittery. :)

Here are the materials, all things I had on hand:

A white paper plate, white glue, glitter, red ribbon, a paint brush and a photocopy of her holy card. (You can find an image of St. Agnes online here.) Also shown is the page I tore from the flyer - who knew there would be crafts tucked in amongst the coupons?

Following the instructions, we cut out the snowflake template and placed it on the center of the paper plate. With a paintbrush (the sponge brush shown above was not firm enough, we found) we spread glue all over the template and plate, brushing the glue out towards the edges from the center.

Once the glue was spread all over, we peeled off the template and threw it away (it came off in pieces) and then came the glitter! We chose blue because it is so wintery.

After the glue and glitter had dried, we cut the picture of St. Agnes down to a small oval and applied it (with more glue) to the center of the plate. Finally we punched a hole at the top and threaded a red ribbon through it.

Here it is hanging up in our windows, at a distance ...

And close up, so you can see the sparkles. :)

Tomorrow for tea we will enjoy vanilla pizzelle cookies ~ dusted with confectioner's sugar they will look just like real snowflakes, I think! We will also serve vanilla "tea" - yet another treasure of an idea I am gleaning from Alice. (The tea is actually warmed milk with vanilla and sugar.) I buried a vanilla bean in a tub of sugar over a week ago, so I hope it's ready!

I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend ... and speaking of snow, a storm is predicted for us later this week!

Oh, how I long to see St. Agnes's flowers floating by our windows ...