Wednesday, December 2, 2009

O Antiphon Craft

Our family has been exploring the Liturgy of the Hours this year. Pope John Paul II's encouragement for the laity to explore these prayers really touched our hearts and we have been praying Sunday Vespers together as a family with the help of this lovely resource. (Although I am sure our Cistercian friends would chuckle at our feeble attempts).

The O Antiphons have been on my mind for a while and I had an idea that was loosely based on a craft I saw years ago. I think Marjorie's idea first caught my eye over at the 4Real forum, but it has been too long to remember exactly.

I loved the idea of recycling the stacks of empty Altoid boxes in my craft closet, but didn't want to hunt for things to create dioramas. So instead, I printed off the images from Fr. Z's wonderful Antiphon Website and used his translations to create the cards inside. I probably should have put the dates, now that I think about it, but oh well.
I colored the inside pictures with chalk pastels but you might decide to let your kids color one each night. My kids are on a little bit of a coloring strike right now.
I covered the nutritional information on the back with pretty paper, then made stencils of the first letters of the Messianic titles, and outlined them in gold glitter paint. My idea is that when the Antiphon is read, the box can be placed with the letter showing slowly spelling out ERO CRAS which translates to "Tomorrow, I will come!"
According to Professor Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Benedictine monks arranged these antiphons with a definite purpose. If one starts with the last title and takes the first letter of each one - Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia - the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, “Tomorrow, I will come.” Therefore, the Lord Jesus, whose coming we have prepared for in Advent and whom we have addressed in these seven Messianic titles, now speaks to us, “Tomorrow, I will come.” So the “O Antiphons” not only bring intensity to our Advent preparation, but bring it to a joyful conclusion.
If you would like to make your own, here are my pdf files that already have all the images sized correctly. This file has the inside pictures and antiphons, and this one has the outer images with the titles. You just have to trace around them and cut them out. For the stencils on the back, I used the Harrington font in a 275 pt. size. If you need some Altoid boxes, you local friends can come get some extras, otherwise, dump the mints in a candy dish and let your house be perfumed by them. (That way you can use the boxes now!) I prefer peppermint, but cinnamon would be nice too! (Ooooh, maybe wintergreen... my grandpa always smelled like wintergreen!)

Hope you are all warm and cozy. Our snow has melted into rain, but we are hoping for some more soon!

23 comments:

  1. Oh! I admire all of your ideas! You are so creative! This looks doable, too. ;-) Thanks for the templates. That was so kind.

    God bless!

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  2. Thanks for the pdf's - I'm so craft challenged lately. Now to my FIL to get all his empty tins!

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  3. Ok, because I'm REALLY craft challenged, HOW did you get the words on top of the "O" on the front? I've been looking at this for 10 minutes now and can't figure it out. :(

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  4. Paula,
    The words were printed on the O using Word. They are not attached separately. I think I used the WordArt function. If you look at the pdf files, you will see that they are already there on the page. Does that help?

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  5. I need to get some tins. I think my dh will be eating these mints for a long time.

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  6. KC,
    They are great for clearing the sinuses. Whenever my husband needs to sneeze, he chews two of them together very quickly. You will be breathing clear in no time!

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  7. Ohhh, I was thinking I had to wait until next year to do this AWESOME craft, but wait... put the mints in a dish, watch them disappear when I am not looking, make the craft in time for the O Antiphon time! Priceless.

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  8. LOVE this idea . . .

    Thank you so much!

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  9. That must be my problem. I don't see them on the pdf file. There are 4 pages, but they only have the text and graphics that were used on the inside of the tins, not the outside.

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  10. You have to click both words (pdf and files) separately to see them. I went ahead and edited the post to make the two separate links more obvious. Sorry about the confusion!

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  11. Ok. Is it wrong to go out and buy these candies/mints in order to do this?!!!
    Fantastic!

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  12. Charlotte, these are just lovely. You are just lovely!

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  13. PS. I am suddenly craving a whole lot of Altoids.

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  14. Just added to my shopping list...seven boxes of altoids. We really do need them, REALLY!

    Thanks for the templates, Charlotte, what a blessing you are to all of us!

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  15. Thank you from your craft-challenged friend!

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  16. Such a cute idea! I'm featuring this in my O Antiphons post running Dec 10. Thanks for sharing!

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  17. my husband and I are starting to do the liturgy of the hours as well with our single volume Breviary. Our copy was my mother's and it is more than 50 years old, but Father V. said we could still use it. So we too are joining the ranks of the laity praying the hours.

    Love the altoid idea. Not sure exactly what we will do this year.

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  18. I'm back with a question: what glue did you use? I tried Elmer's but the results were not favorable.

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  19. I thought about using some rubber cement, but ended up trying my trusty Elmer's glue stick (the blue gel kind) and it worked fine. I almost never use regular Elmer's white glue unless it's for paper mache or something like that. You could try Fast Grab Tacky glue too.

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  20. Thanks for the great craft idea and the PDF's! Makes it super easy for us!

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  21. Thank you for so generously sharing your pdf files. With a new baby due any day I think the O Antiphons would have gone by without any attention this year without these templates. I am really enjoying your blog.

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  22. As to the glue question, you will find that Modge Podge works great. There are several finishes so be sure you get the one you like (matte, shiny, glitter, etc.) I used a sponge brush to glue them on and covered them with more modge podge for a nice finish. Don't let the modge podge dry on your brush or you will have a rock hard brush that needs to be thrown away. My attempt at this craft is at artteajannell.blogspot.com. What a lovely resource your print outs are.

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts and yourself!