Cheap Ideas - Tumblr Posts

some things that are (not) jars:

a lot of practitioners like to use jars in their craft for any number of reasons, but they’re often out of budget for myself and presumably many of you as well, so, here’s a list of jars and jar-like materials you may already have, ones that are inexpensive, or things you may be able to make & use in place of a jar:

pill bottles - take rx meds like i do? have a slowly mounting army of amber color bottles? why not clean em out good and use them in jar spells, to carry seeds & beads, jewelry findings, etc.

empty food, makeup, etc containers - often small and pretty!

let dollar tree be your occult store. - from candles to containers, odds are they work just as well as more expensive and whitewashed candles & empty containers.

envelopes! - make them or buy them, envelopes are a great alternative to jars for spells that use only dry materials. bonus points if you draw sigils or write on the envelope, or use color magic with the paper

pouches - this is one i learned as a baby witch for making spells wearable, but you don’t have to wear them for them to work! i’ll make a separate post for the tutorial, but i highly recommend craft felt for this!

small boxes - what it says on the tin! tie it closed with some string

string - if everything in your spell can work in a bundle, why not do that instead?

really it’s about finding the magic in the mundane and utilizing that instead of looking for the most perfect tools ever.

wind be with you!

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LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MONTEREY BAY SPICE CO.

You need herbs in bulk and you don’t have a lot of money? This place has your back.

Here is the first order I received, ¼ pound bag each of sage, bay leaf, rosemary, basil, sea salt, and cinnamon sticks. How much did all this together run me? $22. 

That’s WITH shipping. I am so ecstatic about this place and I figured that everyone needed to know about it. You can find their website HERE. They also sell teas, essential oils, glassware, spice blends, and all sorts of supplies. I love this place and it is now a valuable resource in my life

Budget Witchcraft Supplies Masterpost

Pendulums:

Choose Your Gemstone with Silver Owl Pendant - $0.99

Choose Your Gemstone with Silver Starfish Pendant - $0.99

Choose Your Gemstone with Silver Horse Pendant - $0.99

Choose Your Gemstone with Silver Dragonfly Pendant - $0.99

Choose Your Gemstone Pendulum Necklace - $1.61

Choose your Gemstone Tibetan Pendulum Necklace - $1.86

Sodalite Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.89

Turquoise Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.89

Opal Opalite Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.89

Amethyst Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Unakite Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Agate Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Blue Rock Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Red Jasper Pendulum Choose your Pendant - $1.99

Silver White Crystal Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Aventurine Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Gold Sand Stone Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Multicolor Jade Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Jasper Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Blue Sand Stone Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Cherry Quartz Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Red Cherry Quartz Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Yellow Crazy Lace Agate Pendulum Choose Your Pendant - $1.99

Mixed Color Sea Sediment Pendulum - $2.09

Loose Crystals and Stones:

Fluorite Chips/Chunks - $0.60 - $1.80

Carnelian Chunks - $0.70 - $2.60

Reiki Crystals Choose Your Own - $1.99

Tumbled Green Calcite - $0.62 - $5.40

100g Natural Amathyst Stones - $3.06

100g Obsidian Stones - $3.12

2 Natural Citrine Stones - $2.22 (Plus Shipping)

5 Natural Rose Quartz Stones - $2.95 (Plus Shipping)

½ LB of Assorted Crystals - $4.00 (Plus Shipping)

19 Assorted Crystals - $4.00 (Plus Shipping)

1 LB Natural Adventurine Crystals - $8.00 (Plus Shipping)

Other Supplies:

Velvet Bags Choose Your Color - $0.80

Fuse Tubes (10pcs) - $0.99

Assorted Sea Shells - $1.00 (Dollar Tree)

Warming Oil - $1.00 (Dollar Tree)

Oil Warmers - $1.00 (Dollar Tree)

Taper Candles (White, Beige, Red) - $1.00 (Dollar Tree)

Tealight Candles - $1.00 (Dollar Tree)

Mason Jars - $1.00 (Dollar Tree)

Assorted Sea Shells - $4.99 (Walmart)

DIY - candle holder 🕯

Let’s get crafty! ✂️

You’ll need:

x branches

x string

x scissors

Step 1

Break the branches to the right length (according on how big your candle is) and connect them in a row

Step 2

Tie the branches together with a tripod node from two sides (in my case not so accurate 😂)

You’re all done! As simple as that!

REMEMBER! 🚩

Do not leave your candles unattended!

Enjoy and stay safe witches! ✂️❣

Sending good vibes, Julia

Witchy supplies for nomadic, poor, homeless, parochial, and anti-consumerist witches.

You don’t need tools. Everyone tells us that, and it may well be true. But let’s be real, they do legit help you focus especially when you’re new, and witchcraft is all about focus. For me, as an empath, they also reduce the amount of energy I have to expend on a spell. Beyond that, hell, there’s just something nice about physical ritual and creation. And why wouldn’t there be, with a practice based on crafting? We all have our thing we connect to, process-wise. Personally, I have a much easier time focusing and making witchy shit happen if something’s on fire at some point in the process. Mmm, fire. Anyway…

But just because you want or need tools doesn’t mean you need to spend every cent you make on it the way it sometimes seems when you browse a pagan store, or even online witch communities. And for a tradition that’s always been primarily about empowering the oppressed and the have-nots, personally, it irritates the hell out of me that so much of modern witchery has gotten… well, so elitist and classist. You’re not witch enough unless your grimoire is made of the hide of baby otters and your rosemary was harvested by Indigo children in the enchanted forests of Dunedin.

Fuck that.

I, for one, wish I saw more inexpensive, DIY, and found tool witchery portrayed as not only doable, but meaningful and beautiful.

So here are my ideas on how you can get a good flying leap on your witchy cabinet (or witchy rucksack, if you’re nomadic or homeless) for under £10. I’ve done some of these myself and I’ll post pics of how awesome these can really look.

What you need for…

Sigil craft:

Nothing. You can write sigils in water if you want. Personally, I often make sigils with honey in the bottom of my tea cup.

But if you want to make your own, which requires a fair bit of trial and error, or ya just really like writing shit down…

Pen

Paper

You probably already have these. If you don’t, then buy a packet of cigarette rolling papers. They’re thin and a bit see-through (perfect for tracing your sigil if need be) and obviously they’re designed to burn cleanly if you want to burn them to activate them. 50 to a pack. £1 or less.

Buy a pen. Or knick one at the desk of your local annoying government agency. No judgment. Less than £1.

Sigils can be charged in a variety of ways that are absolutely free. Energy manipulation, holding them to a pulse point on your body, tearing, even visualizing while having an orgasm.

Candles:

Tesco has 100 tea lights for £2.

Lighter and/or matches. Anywhere. Under £1. Matches are sometimes free.

Divination:

Do you have a rock or stone? Does it have a hole in it, or can you put one in it? Stick an earing wire through it and attach a necklace chain. Pendulum. Shazam. Here’s mine.

Does your rock not have a hole in it? Make some netting out of thread, tie it around the rock, and then use either more thread or a necklace chain for the support. Pendulum. Double shazam.

Got some playing cards? Cartomancy.

Got anything that plays music? Shufflmancy.

Got anything with a shiny screen, or access to it? Scrying.

Got a stick? Slice it up and draw some runes on the cross sections.

Got water? Hydromancy.

Got a candle? Cyromancy. Pyromancy. Ceromancy. ALL THE -MANCY’S.

Herbs:

Look in your cabinet if you have one. You probably have at least salt and pepper. Both highly useful, especially salt. If not, both together will cost you under £1 at Tesco.

Or you could always just swipe some packets from McDonalds. Again, no judgment.

If you want more, go down to your nearest Asian or Indian market. That is where the bargain herbs will be – often large quantities for under a pound. It may be harder to buy small quantities, but it’s worth a look before you go to the supermarket.

Also, if you have the domestic stability and the green thumb to do so, it’s worth looking into whether it would be cheaper to grow your own.

Also consider what kinds of local plants you can find growing free, and would be useful to you. Dandelions? They’re everywhere, and super magical. I use the little purple flowers that grow in the cracks in the concrete outside my door. I don’t even know what they are (therefore I am careful not to consume them), but they represent home for me.

Crystals:

Any piece of jewelery you have that has any sort of stone on it.

Any piece of glass; use it like quartz, although it seems to drain a bit faster.

Rocks you find. There’s tons of pretty and magical stones to be found in forests and beaches and gardens.

Coal. Yup, coal. Actually, um, guys? I LOVE coal for energy absorption and clearing. You should try it.

Containers for storage and spell jars/bags:

Any tupperware you might have.

Any containers you might empty (sauce jars, etc).

Ziplock bags.

For highly mobile containers, cut an inch or two of a straw, melt the end to seal it, fill with whatever, and melt the other end to seal that too. Free at any fast food place that has soda fountains.

Wand:

Find a stick you like. This is a environmental craft, dude. Get in the spirit!

Chalice/cauldron/stuff for putting stuff in (we’re going cheap here, so multi-purpose is a thing):

Any cup or bowl. Hit the pound store if for some reason you don’t have one, or want a special one.

An ashtray. Possibly one you found sitting outside, looking sad and lonely at a restaurant. No judgment.

Athame:

Any knife.

Or even, again, a fast food place that has plastic knives that you can deck out if you want.

Or an awesomely sharp chipped rock.

Besom:

Any broom.

Find a pretty reed and use that. Great for a mobile mini-besom for altar use. Or lash a bunch of reeds or thin twigs together onto a long stick and make an actual full-size broom. Results can be frickin’ beautiful, by the way. I made one that I love. All found materials. Behold (this was right after the reeds dried from soaking to soften them, so it wasn’t as fluffy as it is now).

Travel altar for nomadic/homeless witches:

Just some examples with the stereotypical altar layout, but really, you can use anything that’s small enough for your needs…

Any little container. Altoid tin, old spice jar, jewelery box, whatever. You could even use a piece of fabric and bundle everything up in there, and it could double as an altar cloth when you untie it.

Thimble, bottle cap, or folded tinfoil for cup/chalice for water.

Birthday candles, anything red or orange, chilli pepper or spice for fire.

Dirt for earth. I mean, obviously. What’s super cool about this is that you can take it from wherever you are, which gives you an automatic connection.

Found feather for air.

Whatever the hell you want for your focus point. Draw a pentagram on paper. Use your favourite ring you wear everywhere. Use a pretty rock you like.

Most of these can either be found quite easily or gotten for less than a pound.

Grimoire:

Any notebook.

Make a digital grimoire. Probably the cheapest way to make it pretty too. I mean, have you seen what people can do with a simple Tumblr blog? If you do it in Word or Google Drive, you can download all kinds of cool page borders, free.

So there ya go. And thing is, a lot of witches won’t even want or need all of these things. Not into crystals? Don’t get any! Ain’t got time for altars? Don’t make one! So in reality, a lot of witches could spend considerably less than the cost of getting all of these.

But if you did decide to acquire all of this, now you have materials for sigil craft, candle magic, a million kinds of divination, basic staples of herbal and crystal magic, storage containers, spell jar containers, both a regular and travel-size altar, and a grimoire. That’s a pretty good set of kit.

At best, you spent literally nothing at all. Most people will already have most of these things anyway.

Some may need to buy some of these things. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of these things can be found or made for free quite easily, with a couple of exceptions. By my best guess, poor or homeless witches in most places wouldn’t need any more than approximately £3 to £5 if they were starting with nothing, their goal was to acquire something from every category, and they could not ask loved ones to spot them supplies.

Some of these are not as over-the-top gorgeous as the artisanal stuff people buy off Etsy. But you know what? It’s sure as hell authentic. This is what witches have done for eons: use what’s around them. Witchcraft is not about flashing how much money you have. And nothing’s stopping you from decorating with whatever you have.

Witchcraft is for everyone, not just folks who have £200 to blow on an athame.

Even if you have the £200 to blow on an athame, there is something really rewarding about crafting things yourself. This is, after all, witchcraft. I am privileged enough at this point in my life that I could have bought a lot of the stuff I decided to make or find (and sometimes making is more expensive than buying, though it’s fun and meaningful), but honestly, my DIY and scavenged tools usually speak to me more than my purpose-bought tools do.

It’s worth trying and seeing how it changes how you feel about your work. Give it a shot. And if you do, share with me! I wanna see!

Broke Witch Tips - Magic on a Budget

As capitalism sets its sights on the witchcraft community, it’s easy to get caught up in all the stuff that companies try to sell you.

Alas, not all of us have the money to spend on expensive items. If we're being honest, you probably don't need such items to begin with.

For those that are curious, however, let's talk about how to do magic on a budget.

First things first, reframe what you think magic is.

Magic is not what you buy.

It’s not pricey crystals, expensive altar tools, and pretty bottles. As fun as those are, they aren't necessary to practice magic.

All you need to create magic is yourself, your intentions, and your actions.

Still, I said I would talk about how to do magic on a budget, so here are some tips that I have picked up along the way as a broke witch.

Broke Witch Tips

Upcycle what you already have into magical tools. Plenty of the stuff you already own can be used for magic. Make a simmer pot in that old cooking pot. Use the kitchen spices as your herbs in spells.

Thrift stores are great for finding cool bottles and boxes to put your herbs and other magical items in. Also great for spell bottles/jars!

You don’t need every herb under the sun, many of the most accessible (and cheapest) herbs have similar, if not the same, correspondences as the expensive ones.

Buy herbs from the grocery store or farmers market, if possible.

If you have a green thumb, grow the herbs yourself!

Tarot cards can be expensive, but you can use a deck of regular playing cards for cartomancy if needed! There are also options such as tarot apps and websites that allow you to use their digital tarot decks for free.

Make your own tarot or oracle deck if you're artistic and have the time/energy to do so!

You don’t need to have an expensive cast-iron cauldron, just find a fire safe bowl or container. For me, I use a handmade bowl that I got at a fair in my hometown! Works like a charm.

The dollar store is a great place to find inexpensive candles, usually they’re tea lights but you might get lucky and even find some chime candles.

If you're working with deities: plenty of them like hand-made items for offerings! So you don’t need to go out and break the bank just to buy an expensive statue.

This is not a post to shame the folks who own expensive things for witchcraft. I’m sure most of us would agree that if we had the money to go all out, we certainly would! This is just a post for those of us that can’t afford costly goods but would still like to have physical items when practicing magic.

Feel free to add your tips for practicing low-cost magic!

Have a lovely day <3

Broke Witch Masterpost

General  [Poor Teen Witches]  [Accumulating Witch Stuff on a Budget] [Witch On A Budget]  [Being a Witch on a Budget] [Cheap Pagan’s Guide (For Those Who Aren’t Crafty and Still Want to Spend Money)] [Dollar Store Magic: [Part 01]; [Part 02] [Limited Witchcraft Masterpost] [Magic on a Budget] [A Poor Witch’s Guide] [Practices for a Beginner Witch on a Budget] [Thrifting for Witchy Supplies] [Witchy Supplies for Nomadic, Poor, Homeless, Parochial, and Anti-Consumerist Witches] [Things To Do As A Broke Witch]  [Simple Witch Things You Can Do]  Magick / Spells / Divination  [Simple Beginner Spells Masterpost]  [15 Simple Spells]  [Simple Around The House Charms]  [Room Cleansing For Broke Witches]  [Cheap Way To Make Tarot Cards]  [Simple Candle Spell]  [Simple Luck Spell]  [Easy Thunderstorm Spell]  Ingredients [Common Spell Ingredients]  [A Low Budget List of Altar Supplies] [Unconventional & Affordable Ingredients for Spells] [Common Spell Items]  [Common Desk Supplies In Witchcraft]  [Inexpensive Items For Your Craft]  [Broke Witch Haul]  Altars [Altar Decorating For Broke Baby Witches] [Altar Building For The Broke Witch] [Altars On A Budget]  Deities [Simple Offerings To The Greek Gods - For Broke Witches] [Deity Worship For The Broke Witch]  Tips [Witchy Tips and Tricks] [Budget Witch Tips] [Tips and Tricks for the Frugal (or Broke) Wiccan] [Tips For The Cheap Witch]  [Broke Witch Tips]  [Broke Witch Tips (Different Post]  [Witch On A Budget Tip]  [Broke Witch Tip]  [Tips For Witches With A Tight Budget]