Celebrating Ostara: Building a Nest

Ostara is a pagan holiday on the Wheel of the Year marking the Spring equinox. It represents a time of balance, renewal, and fertility. This is the time of year when animals are mating, birds begin nesting, and new life begins. To celebrate this energy I decided to build a nest for my Ostara altar. It was a fairly simple and affordable process, I sourced most materials from nature (and my craft closet). I gathered sticks on my visits to the woods. Be mindful to always ask permission and thank the woods and trees you are taking from when you are foraging.

I had most of the rest of the supplies in my craft closet; paint, moss, and a hot glue gun. I just needed to get some wooden eggs to fill the nest with that abundant energy of new life. I visited Michael’s and was happy to find a bag of wooden eggs in their seasonal section along with a wooden base for my nest.

Now I was ready to craft!

I ended up painting three eggs in soft pastels.

I decided to start by painting the base in an earthy brown color. Next, I painted the eggs. I began the process by selecting colors that are often associated with Ostara like soft pastels, pinks, greens, and blues. I painted the eggs intuitively, whatever felt right I went with and I wasn’t afraid to paint over things that didn’t. I learned the hard way that it is very hard to paint eggs without getting your hands absolutely covered in paint, but hey that’s a part of the fun!

Next, I arranged the twigs in a circle and glued them to the base to create an outline to build off of. From there I kept layering on more sticks with hot glue until I felt happy with the results. I also found a beautiful fallen willow branch with soft buds on a walk earlier in the day and decided to weave it through the nest, and wow it looked beautiful!

Nest on my altar before adding the eggs.

The last step was adding in the moss to create a soft layer for the eggs to rest. Which consisted of adding chunks of moss to the base with hot glue and viola! It was done and ready to be placed on my Ostara altar!