Mother and daughter help customers ‘keep memories’ by selling voodoo dolls and junk journals

POCATELLO — A mother and daughter have taken to selling two very different products that carry a common theme – memory keeping.

Cathrine Melragon, 57, and Zoe Tassava, 30, both from Pocatello, run Disturbed Findings, and they sell handmade voodoo dolls and junk journals. They operate as an online seller, but were at the Mystic Realms Fantasy Fair last weekend.

Melragon is the originator behind the voodoo dolls found on Disturbed Findings. They’re designed to “link a memory to a physical object.” The junk journals are like “pop up books for adults.”

“It’s got a lot of flips and flaps and pockets and it’s kind of like a memory keeper, like a scrapbook (except it) doesn’t really take up your time. You just put your stuff in there,” Melragon said.

To make the dolls, Melragon starts with a canvas base and then sews on repurposed items, like buttons, dresses and vinyl doll appendages. Sometimes these items are donated to her, and other times she finds them at thrift stores.

Oftentimes, people who buy the dolls say it reminds them of a loved one. Making a doll that brings back a memory for a person brings Melragon joy.

“Her favorite thing in the world is when somebody comes in and one of (her dolls) makes that person happy,” Tassava said. “She just glows.”

Making junk journals is a “magic process,” Tessava said, that starts with binding file folders together and adding all kinds of pockets and flaps throughout the pages.

“Every time I look, there’s a new pocket I didn’t know existed,” Tassava said. “I use mine as a scrapbook without the work. I don’t have time to glue things on the pages and make them look pretty. I just get to tuck stuff in.”

While Melragon hasn’t always been someone who makes voodoo dolls and junk journals, she has always been someone who likes to preserve memories and work on crafts.

“As I grew up, we did all sorts of crafting, all sorts of art stuff,” Tassava recalled.

Her mom often sewed clothes for her when she was a kid.

Melragon built up a large amount of crafting supplies over the years. Being someone interested in things macabre who also had a sewing machine made creating voodoo dolls seem like a natural next step.

She also found it easy to work what started as a hobby into her schedule.

“You might only have 15 minutes to do something and these are easy to start and stop,” Melragon said.

They started their Etsy shop in 2018 and launched their website the following year. During the pandemic, Melragon added junk journals to the business.

While Melragon’s husband doesn’t see the appeal of the voodoo dolls, he’s a huge fan of the baby doll head potted plants she makes.

“Everybody’s got their own thing,” Melragon said. “That’s what makes us, society, keep going because everybody is so different, and you’ve got to embrace that.”