Spirit House Incense Holder v.3

thingiverse

A generous member of my Discord 3D printing group did a test print for me on their Trinus and kindly sent the photos to me! I added an "offering" of a single lavender blossom from my garden. ;)\r\n\r\n**Design Notes/Updates**\r\n\r\nI updated the design again, continually tweaking it to make it more spirit house-like. I thinned down the base because it looked better and decided on a completely different route for the roof to make it closer to images of spirit houses. I'm starting to get the hang of TinkerCAD, but I still struggle with drawing out shapes and have to carve them using other shapes, which is very different from my usual way of working.\r\n\r\nI updated the design to include a file for the .2 version that has thinner fence posts - it just looked better. I'm looking forward to being able to make it much prettier in the future!\r\n\r\n\r\n**What Is This? About My Spirit House Incense Holder Project**\r\n\r\nMy friend from Thailand told me all about spirit houses used for worship of gods and/or ancestors, basically tokens for good fortune and a focal point to have a physical place and object for spiritual thoughts/activities (kind of like having a personal shrine or altar). Some people have large and elaborate ones, while others are smaller and more humble. You can keep them either within your home or (more commonly) in the yard outside. You place small figures in the house to represent the spirits you'd like to have come inhabit the house, and then you light incense, possibly candles sometimes, and leave little offerings while talking/praying to the spirit(s) who live in your spirit house, asking for their presence to protect your home and its inhabitants, or imploring your departed family to watch over you. She showed me pictures - they are so beautiful! I was fascinated! \r\n\r\nI decided I needed one of my own because who doesn't need a little intervention by friendly spirits in their lives? I wanted to try my hand at designing one for printing, so others could share too. I live in an apartment with no yard, and I have a small print bed, so I made a windowsill-sized model.\r\n\r\nIf you live in Thailand or are Catholic or Neo-Pagan, or just generally have a home altar/shrine, you can add this to it as a holder for incense and invite whatever you believe in to come visit it and watch over you. If you're not any of these things but like candles and/or incense and want a little holder for them related to a cool cultural and spiritual practice, you could also print this.\r\n\r\nOnce printed, my plan is to use my rotary tool to drill a tiny hole for the sticks of incense into the indented place on the base - I think this will be way easier than trying to build that into the design, especially as some incense sticks are different sizes. Once this has been done, I can either push incense sticks into the hole or place a small candle in the indent. If you don't have the means to drill a hole or don't want to, you could place a small blob of putty or clay at the bottom of the indent to anchor a stick of incense into. Hopefully, the indent will catch most of the ashes, but we'll see. The small platform is to place offerings of food or flowers or whatnot. The hollow in the house can have a small doll or figure placed inside. You can paint it or leave it as is or whatever you want!\r\n\r\nI intend to improve on this design over time as my skills improve, just wanted to see what I could accomplish now with TinkerCAD. Please feel free to fiddle - I'd love to see others' interpretations. Make it customizable, text you can alter on the archway, add a doghouse for the spirit's dog, give it flying buttresses, whatever you want. My goal is to make this much more ornate and pretty. And er, looking more like a little house and less like something a three-year-old drew...\r\n\r\nHopefully your friendly house spirit will not mind living in budget manufactured housing...\r\n\r\nThis thing was made with Tinkercad. Edit it online https://www.tinkercad.com/things/3JaWGOlY5af