Decoupage Your Sacred Home

Many pagan practitioners have sacred places where they connect with the divine. It might be an ancient sacred site, a special spot in nature, or even a covenstead. But the reality is that for most of us, the majority of our magickal working and worship occurs in our homes.

As Azrael Arynn K shares in her “Sacred Homes” course through Ardantane Pagan Retreat Center, our homes are a place that reflects our inner selves, our beliefs, and our values. When our home isn’t in sync with our spirit, we may feel like we’re wearing the wrong skin. It drains our energy. But when our home is sacred (holy, blessed, consecrated, inspired), it supports our magick. It’s a similar concept as Feng Shui, just pagan-style.

One of the ways to create your sacred home is by making it your own creation. You fill it with the art, furnishings, and objects you love. But sometimes the art and objects we love aren’t in the budget. There’s a certain magick in imbuing your sacred space with creations of your own making.

The Decoupage Doors

My inspiration came from a memorable trip to Ireland where we hopped from AirBnB to AirBnB. One of the places we stayed was this marvelous gypsy wagon camping experience in southwest Ireland on the Beara Peninsula. It reminded us of The Gypsy Nomads’ upbeat and evocative song Caravan. The hosts had transformed a storage container into a shared bathroom, and part of the charm were the unique bathroom doors they had decorated in decoupage.

A shared bathroom with a sink and a decoupage door of two human figures and a tree. — Decoupage doors at the Gypsy Wagon in Lauragh, Ireland. P.S. you can stay at this magical place yourself. Check them out on airbnb.

I took an immediate shine to the doors, and I couldn’t help think of the dinged, scratched, and wholly unattractive interior doors at our own home. My assumption had been that I would either have to replace the entire door or at least paint over it. Here was a new solution, so much more distinctive and supportive of our vision of a sacred home. I pointed out the doors to my husband Charlie and said, “we could do this at our house!” He made the fatal mistake of agreeing (or at least not arguing, which any married couple knows is exactly the same as agreeing.)

From Inspiration to Creation

It wasn’t long after our return that I started plotting our sacred doors. My vision was a tribute to the elements. The guest room would be earth, the bathroom water (obviously), the bedroom fire, and the office air. I started with the guest room (which over the years has been the “meditation room,” the “music room,” and the “drum room,” but in actuality, tends to always become the junk room—another sacred room task to undertake).

Two doors, the one on the left is a decoupage of a tree and the one on the right is a boring brown door. — The earth door springs to life! Note how sad the closet door beside it looks.

From the first door, a tree emerged, alit with fairy energy. (Perhaps the influence for the song “Lady Titania,” recorded and to be released in 2023 on the Crow Women 4th album.) The bathroom door became the Cliffs of Moher, a tribute to the trip that inspired the entire venture. The bedroom door was to be a torch, and that vision pinged around in my brain for a while before a spiral emerged, for some strange reason. The idea was that the spiral would contain the colors of fire—spiraling from burgundy to red and orange and ending with the yellow middle. I even went as far as to clean and prep the door and pencil in the design and paste the edges with an off-white paper I’d found that ended up essentially the same color as the door.

That was probably 2019. After a day spent on the first stage, it languished for years and years. Something about the design just wasn’t inspiring me. My bedroom didn’t want to be on fire. It wanted to be a place of dreams and relaxation. It wanted to rest under goddess moon.

Unlike the first false start, once I began tracing and filling in the new design, it came easily and was finished within a few days. That was the first testament to the rightness of my choice. The second was how it felt when done. My moon door feels like a blanket of restful, guarded night across the room.

A door decoupaged with a triple moon and a moon fairy. — The moon door. We usually sleep with the bedroom door open, so the triple Goddess Moon shines down on me every night. (Just like Deb’s song!)

DIY Decoupage

There are many ways to create your own sacred home. However, if some decoupage sparks your interest, I can share what I’ve learned. It’s an easy, forgiving craft.

Materials needed:

Paper (preferably glossy, like from magazines)
Mod Podge waterbase sealer (matte or gloss, based on personal preference)
Brushes or sponges of varying sizes
Mod Podge clear acrylic spray sealant

Step one:

Determine your decoupage theme and design. These will guide the colors and images you will look for in step two.

Step two:

Gather your paper. Magazines work best, both for the glossy finish and the thickness. Pull out colors and images that you think you’ll use and sort them into categories. I used browns, yellows, oranges, reds, sky blues, sea blues, greens, whites/ivories, and black. I also liked tearing most of the paper. It gives a nice organic look to the mosaic. For certain edges, I would cut cleaner lines to make a clear difference between images. But the pieces within the images should blend as much as possible. You will need far more paper than you think!

Step three:

Prep your base. On my doors, this mostly meant a good cleaning to get any loose grime off. Fortunately, the decoupage will cover any dents or scratches, but if there are any major flaws, you may consider a quick sand or some caulk to even up the surface.

Step four:

Sketch out your design. You’ll be covering it with paper, so it doesn’t need to be elaborate. It just needs to give you a sense of where your different elements will go.

Step five:

Start pasting! Mod Podge is great because it’s both a glue and a sealer, so you don’t have to be too cautious about where you get it. Paste each piece in the color area where it goes, overlapping and fitting each piece like a puzzle. I tend to start with the color blocks and backgrounds and fill in with images and words at the end. You might want to try to find color that matches pretty close. I like to use a wide variety of hues within the same color category to get a glass mosaic feel. If you don’t like something you’ve done, it’s pretty easy to cover it up with more paper.

Step six:

Cover the final product with a layer of Mod Podge paste. Once you’ve covered the object (door or otherwise), cover the entire thing with a layer of the Mod Podge paste. Let that dry and finish off with 1-2 layers of spray acrylic. It gives it a nice gloss finish, protects the final product, and gets rid of any residual tackiness.

Step seven:

Celebrate your sacred home with ritual and song!

Sacred Home Songs

Here are some recommended songs from pagan artists to either inspire or help you celebrate your sacred home.

Once you’ve run out of pagan songs, here are a few tracks from muggle culture to celebrate your sacred home and the people who make you feel like you’re there.

For more inspiration on creating your sacred home, check out “Elemental Altars for Your Home” https://pagansong.com/elemental-altars-blessing-my-home/

To see Tara’s collected articles here on Pagan Song, visit her author page.

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