A while ago my in-laws, whose company I really enjoy, travelled across our not-so-wide country to visit us. My mother-in-law had visited a friend’s bead store and brought me a gift of beautiful beads and things! Here are some of them assembled into necklaces:

The chain is long enough to end mid-chest but short enough to not dangle and swing against desk and keyboard when at work. In every second or third hoop I’ve attached a largish glass bead by twisting 1mm wire through the hoop connectors on each side, adding a smaller bead on each side to stop the large bead from moving around..

The red necklace is strung on two pieces of nylon, tied together at the front (permanently, there is also a clasp at the back). The red 3-4mm glass beads came mixed – there are also some bronze ones in there – and I think they go well together with the beautiful resin Tensha rose beads at the ends. I think this will be my official xmas necklace (who knew one needs one of those?).

So, to prove that I sometimes use other colours than black, white, amethyst and silver, here are two examples =)

The colourful one is made of 8-9 mm laquered freshwater pearls in chocloate brown, beetle green, jeans blue and turqoise strung on wire. Between each is a small bronze bead to create some space. This necklace is great, it goes with everything!

The other one has been called ‘dream catcher’ by many. I didn’t make it as one or thinking of one, but clearly it looks like one! The beaded neck part is strung on wire, no clasp but it fits over the head, and are of my favourite clear, silverfoiled rocaille and moss green reflecting plastic beads that are really cool but didn’t come out at all in the photo, and a black organza ribbon. I’ve wound thin black wire (0,6mm) over the pendant with a few rocailles and a green bead and then hung pins with metal hearts, more rocaille and beads on them. The pins are flat ended and I’ve just bent them at the bottom to make the hearts hang straight. All the black metal parts are from Panduro in Stockholm.

This year the gingerbread house evolved into more of a full gingerbread landscape, a small part of the Moomin valley. The Moomins, who are usually asleep during the winter, have been woken up by the Hemule and are exploring the snow. They have some unexpected company – a penguin lurking around the corner, a surrealistic family of mini-moomins living in an igloo right outside the Moomin lighthouse and our old friend the manga prince, fighting the dragon as always.

2008 gingerbread project

I had templates for the Moomin house and they can be found here. It seems to be to scale with a Moomin playhouse, to which the figurines belong., we found them in Dona’s shop in Stockholm. The bridge and the other houses are just cut out from the dough. Oh, and don’t buy the cheepest gingerbread dough you can find. It’s not hard enough to make houses of and you have to rebuild them…

More photos of the project can be found in the photo album.