Hand embroidered jewelry by Skrynka

Many countries have deeply routed traditions of folk music, art and dance. It's amazing to look into how people used to live centuries ago and how they tried to make their lives bright and beautiful by decorating their homes with traditional ornaments. I find Eastern European folk art quite unique and inspiring. I've recently come across a fantastic artist Natalka of Skrynka who creates distinctive and beautiful hand embroidered and cross stitched jewelry and home decor pieces.



Could you please tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Natalka. I live in Ukraine. I've been sewing, knitting and hand making items since I was a child. However, embroidery is my main passion. I may occasionally fall in love with a different technique or fiber but I always come back to my main obsession which is embroidery and cross stitching.

I'm a mom of a 2 years old and try to share time between my family and my business of making folk inspired jewelry. I dream about developing my business into something feasible one day. I would love to travel, see the world together with my family or even move to a place next to the sea. It's all in the plans for now. I hope one day I'll be able to combine my dreams and aspirations with my business and family life.



How did you start?

I started embroidering and cross stitching when I was a small child. I used to embroider large images but my true passion was always unique Ukrainian folk ornaments and patterns. I dreamed about combining folk embroidery with contemporary art and craft.
Soon after I had my son I decided it's time to turn my hobby into a business. I started making cross stitched jewelry and home decor items. Most importantly people like what I create. It's such a great pleasure to make items that actually inspire other people and make them happy.



What are your main sources of inspiration?

My main source of inspiration is traditional Ukrainian ornaments and patterns. I collect pictures of old traditional folk dresses such as blouses, skirts, festive towels, etc. I often visit our local museum of ornamental and folk art. I also collect books about old and traditional home decorations, designs and Ukrainian medieval clothes.

Each region has its own distinctive patterns and colors. I've noticed that nations living on different continents sometimes have somewhat similar ornaments and patterns. I keep finding similarities between Ukrainian folk embroidery and embroidery of native Americans and Mexicans.



What fibers do you work with?

I mostly work with natural and eco friendly fibers. I prefer to work with linen fabrics, wool felt and rarely with eco-friendly manufactured felt. To create my jewelry pieces I use lead-free and nickel-free jewelry making supplies. I take it seriously and have an equipment set up at home to check levels of different metals in my supplies. It's always better to double-check suppliers and make sure items I use for jewelry making are lead and nickel free. I myself have very sensitive ears and, thus, always use only non-sensitizing ear hooks for my earrings.



Our planet is suffering from over development and over use. I believe that we should all be concerned about the future of our planet. Even small improvements we could do to make our life more eco-friendly will benefit our planet and us as a result. I strongly believe that by buying hand made items people not only get high quality and unique things made with love but help individual artists and their families to keep their creative process alife. It makes a big difference for everyone!

GIY Tutorial How to make felted bracelet with buttons

I still have some buttons left from my crocheting adventure. I don’t like nice items to rest idle on my working table in my studio so I came up with an idea of a felted bracelet with buttons.

To make the bracelet we will need undyed felting wool, buttons of different colors and sizes, bubble plastic wrap, a needle and a white thread.



I first started with felting a bracelet. If you don't feel like felting today you can always buy a prefelted wool in any of craft and supplies stores. If you decide to go with a prefelted piece just cut a rectangle shaped piece out of a prefelted wool. The measurements could be about 2 and ½ inch by 9 and ½ inch.



I prefer to felt a bracelet myself as, thus, I’m able to make it as soft and thin as I wish.

On a bubble wrap piece of paper I lay out pieces of wool to form a rectangle. The rectangle will later turn into the bracelet. Since the wool will shrink I make the rectangle about 30% bigger that the original size. I’ll go with about 3 and ½ inch by 12 inch shape this time.



Once the rectangle is formed I wet it with clear water and add soap. Liquid soap should be fine. Once the piece is all wet and soapy I cover it with the rest of bubble plastic paper and start the process of felting. I stroke and rub the plastic helping wool fibers to bind and felt. When the wool has felted I rinse my bracelet in clear water and let it dry completely.



On my bracelet I lay out buttons of different sizes and colors. I can color coordinate them and add some extra buttons here and there for the pattern to look the way I want it to be.

I sew on buttons one by one with a needle and white thread. It makes sense to sew largest buttons first. It will help you preserve the original pattern and distribute buttons evenly on the bracelet.



Once all the buttons are on the bracelet it’s time to make a snap. One of the buttons can easily be used as a snap. Just make a cut on the opposite side of the bracelet for the button to fit in.

The bracelet looks bright and unique! It can be a great gift for someone who loves buttons. One can always substitute simple buttons with vintage ones or use dyed wool instead of white one as a base.

Happy crafting!

Summer suncatcher by FleetingStillness

I've recently received an amazing gift from a very talented stained glass artist FleetingStillness who lives and works in Maryland.

It's always nice to receive gifts from fellow artists who are members of vast and diverse hand made community. When such gifts turn out to be beautiful hand made pieces of art it's twice as nice!

I always had a soft spot for pieces made of glass. I praise glass for its transparency, variety of colors and opportunities for creativity. The suncatcher I've got is made of bright yellow and blue glass and a copper foil. It was created in a "Tiffany" style meaning no lead was used to attach pieces of glass.

The suncatcher is a perfect summer gift. The sun shines through brightly colored glass lighting up everything around and making me happy! Yellow and blue colors are of the warm sea, sand beaches and vacations! This piece of art will always remind me of the summer. From now on I'll have a small part of an ocean beach in my room.


Alla, thank you for such a great gift!

How to dye in green with blue and yellow drink mixes

Since I bought Kool Aid brink mix in blue raspberry I now have all prime colors I need for dyeing. I am eager to start experimenting with mixing different colors and creating new ones. My first experiment will be in mixing a bright green color. We will need one pack of yellow drink mix. For that we can use lemon Kool Aid. In addition we will need a blue drink mix and blue raspberry Kool Aid works just fine.

I mix both drinks in a plastic container. It makes sense to first make a yellow mix and start slowly adding blue drink mix into the container with yellow water. Keep stirring for colors to mix well. I suggest you do it slowly so that you can control the hue of green and stop when you think the color of the mix is the one you are looking for. I've noticed that for a pack of yellow mix I used about 2/3 the blue one.

I dyed my hand felted white wool pieces in the mixture of two drinks and got brightly colored green stripes.
Now it's time to turn them into something nice and beautiful. I assembled white and green pieces of wool on a base that I hand crocheted from jute earlier. The green color turned out to be even better than I've expected. It's a true positive and happy green. The brooch is bright and vivid making it a great accessory.

Dyeing hand felted bracelet with blue Kool Aid

Since I bought plenty of blue colored Kool Aid on line I continue experimenting with dyeing different hand felted items in bright blue. This time I decided to create a hand felted bracelet.

I first hand felted eight beads mixing white and dark blue wool. To read more about how to make wool beads please visit my earlier post.

To create a blue dyeing mixture I poured Kool Aid blue raspberry drink mix into a plastic container with water. It's important to stir the mixture well before soaking beads in it. Thus, the color will be applied equally on all the beads.

When my dyeing mixture is ready I placed all my eight hand felted wool beads into the container and microwaved it for about 3 minutes or until it starts boiling. Don't overheat the beads as they can get burned! Please be careful handling beads after the microwave as they get extremely hot!

My beads absorbed bright blue color. They now look like marbles with spots of light and dark blue.

Dyed beads could be turned into a necklace, a bracelet or a pair of earrings. I decided to create a jewelry set this time. First I made a bracelet chaining six beads together. I still have two blue beads left. They will look great as a pair of earrings.

The set is of bright colors of sea waters, ocean lagoon and sky. It's completely unique as beads were hand dyed and now have their own special color. That's the beauty of hand dyeing. It creates unique colors and special items!

How to dye with a bright blue Kool Aid drink mix

I finally found the bright blue drink mix I was looking for. The Kool Aid drink mix in blue raspberry has exactly the color I needed to create happy blue items for my on-line shop. It's not easy to get by in local supermarkets. For some reason stores normally don't carry this particular color. However, one can always buy it on the Internet.

To dye with blue drink mix you will need to create felted wool layers first. We will felt white wool and dye it later. To learn about felting you are always welcome to read my earlier post on how to hand dye a flower brooch. When the layers are ready just pour water in a plastic container with blue drink mix and stir it well. Place all your layers in the container and microwave until it starts boiling.

Let your bright blue felted wool layers cool as they are extremely hot in the beginning and gently squeeze the wool until somewhat dry. I usually let my wool dry overnight.
When our bright blue layers are ready we can use them to create a brooch. I personally like to mix colors so to create my brooch I added a few layers of dark blue hand felted wool. The result is a bright and vivid brooch that will go well with happy colors of the summer.

Spring flowers in blue red and yellow

It's so beautiful outside with all the trees, bushes and early spring flowers like daffodils and tulips beginning to bloom. Since I now have a new macro it's the perfect time to try it out and preserve all that spring beauty. Inspired by a few amazing photographers on Etsy I went out for my hunt. Ideally I would love to take pictures of flowers in a wide palette of colors with all possible hues, shades and color combinations. I've started with blues, reds and yellows.

Here are beautiful pale blues with hints of yellow on a greenish background.

Bright reds of a Japanese maple look so fresh and juicy. The flowers are bitten by cold a bit but I'm sure they will survive! The shape of the flower head is very peculiar and unique.

Bright yellow of a daffodil caught my eye. The flower looks like a porcelain with its petals being so fragile and light.

San Diego as a New Year vacation destination

I've been to the West Coast just once and loved it. The way people live and work there is somehow different from the way people go about their business in the East Coast. I just recently came across beautiful vacation pictures of the East Coast by IrinaPhotography. It sounds like a great tradition to go on a family trip to San Diego around New Years. What a fun way to start a new year!

Etsy Front Page treasury

I just ran into a post by Katrinshine about Etsy Front Page. Her Cream Leather Earrings were featured on Etsy Front Page yesterday. Congrats to Katrin!

The post made me go and check my recent appearings on the front page. It turns out I was recently featured as well. A totally amazing treasury by Ayca in pale blue, sky and turquoise colors made it to Etsy's main page! The February Line 5 collection absolutely deserves its 30 minutes of fame!

Thank you Ayca for featuring me in your beautiful collection!

Crocheted flower brooch in blue

I stopped by a supplies store last week and picked up some really cool yarn in blue and its different shades and hues. The yarn is very pleasant to touch, soft and stylish. As a result I crocheted a flower brooch in blue with white hand felted bead in the middle. It looks great of lightly colored outfits. The brooch can be worn on outdoor coats as it's rather durable.

Spring necklace in lime yellow and blue

I totally fell in love with felting yarn of that bright yellow lime color. It radiates so much positive energy and besides is a perfect color for spring and summer. To contrast bright lemon I added dark blue beads. Those two colors look beautiful together. The necklace will go well with bright spring dresses!

Summer earrings in green blue cream

The winter is almost over! I don't know about you but I'm already thinking about deep blue colors of the ocean and pale yellow, cream, bleached out colors of a beach. I'm ready to have a break from white cold snow and immerse myself into sunny days somewhere near the sea. Blue, green, yellow, cream are my favorite colors these days!

Felted Berry Brooch in Chocolate Blue

I keep experimenting with colors and shapes. My new version of a felted berry brooch comes in chocolate and blue. It's a very vivid and beautiful combination of colors that goes well with pretty much any outdoor and indoor outfits and attires. Unique shapes of my berry brooches make them standout. I get a lot of feedback from clients about how they get noticed everywhere they go wearing my brooch. It's so rewarding to know that!
The colors of the brooch make me think about chocolate and cotton candy ice cream that is pretty good by the way! The combination of tilted blue and dark brown is very rewarding and stylish.

Felted brooch in robin egg blue

I hand felted this flower brooch in a shade of robin egg blue, sky, green and white. Those are perfect winter colors that will cheer us up during monochrome days of winter.
For me blue is a color of magic and fairy tales. It is airy and light and has some mystery to it. Blue will go well with pretty much any dress and outfit. It's such an appreciative color!

Hand felted wool flower brooches

I discovered a few really cute buttons in a store and bought them without any particular purpose. They were so lovely that I just desperately wanted to attach them somewhere. Finally I found a place that fits them perfectly. Hand felted flower brooches with multiple layers of felt in different colors look nice with a large vivid spot in the middle. That's where my buttons belong from now on.
The key is to match the color of a button with a color of the felt flower. It's hard to find nice looking buttons but relativery easy to buy wool of diffferent colors and types. So here is the rule: Start with the button!

Flowers in lilac and purple

Flowers are beautiful. They are so fragile and exquisite! Every flower is different and there is no way one can find two similar ones! They come in different colors and shapes. It's amazing how creative nature can be! My favorite Fall flower colors this season are lilac, purple and yellow.
Fall colors tend to be warm.
They remind us of the last sunny days before winter strikes. This feast of colors is our last chance to picture all these yellow, purple, red shades and hues before we enter a monochrome world of winter.
Don't forget about animals, insects and birds of the sunny Summer and Fall days! Some of them are as vivid as any flower or brightly colored Fall leaf. Some damselflies, dragonflies and butterflies remind us of flowers and some look more like exotic aliens from different planets but they all add beauty to our everyday life.

Beach bracelets blue green yellow

I love the summer colors of blue oceans, green mint from cocktails and yellow sun and sand. For a perfect day at the beach I've created this set of three colorful bracelets that are water resistant and adjustable. They will add color to your summer gowns and beach outfits.

Minimalist blue aquamarine fish earrings

I created this minimalist and elegant fish shape earrings of beautiful blue aquamarine glass cubes. These Czech beads are made of high quality glass and shine and sparkle under the sun. Earrings are very easy to put on and take off. They will match almost any summer dress and will add style and color to business outfits as well.

Blue east treasury

I've selected a few wonderful items in different shades of blue. I've got sky blue birds, deep blue oceans, aquamarine stones and exotic blue flowers! It's a great color!

Blue ZigZag earrings

I like to work with wire. It's so nice to be able to twist and bend it the way you want. When I add bright and shiny glass beads and stones to my twisted creations they turn into either blue zigzag, red fish or red apple earrings! It's amazing how much room for creativity a simple wire can offer!