Chocolate raspberry felted brooches as Christmas gifts

For me Christmas season colors are white color of snow, red color of holly berries, green color of pine trees and brown color of trees' branches. The combination of brown and white is especially typical for winter. It's always nice to add red and green to make it more colorful! Bright cranberries and holly berries are what we need. Perfectly shaped and small they look fantastic on white snow.
Christmas holidays are approaching and we all start thinking about gifts for our loved ones. I hand felted a few bright red beads and attached them to pieces of wire covered with chocolate brown wool. My creation turned into a brightly colored brooch. Pins and brooches are great gifts as they could be used not only to add color to an outfit but as home decoration and ornament as well. Such a brooch could be hanged either in a kitchen or living room or even an office cubicle. So much for a Christmas gift idea!

Fine jewelry inspired by Northen beauty from Arctida of Sweden

While searching for beautiful jewelry items created by European artists I came across Arctida, an amazing jewelry designer from Sweden. All her items are absolutely unique and inspired by white and snowy Northern winters, short and intensive Northern Summers and the beauty of country's deep blue lakes and rich forests. I'm always curious to learn more about talented artists, their everyday life and creative processes. I'm very grateful when they are willing to share their experiences and insights as this knowledge enriches us all!

Q: Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Alecia and I'm a mother, wife, scientist, jewelry designer, photographer and a digital artist. I live on the beautiful East coast of Sweden with my husband and our sweet baby girl in the 750 year old city of Stockholm. I have M.S. in Molecular Biology and during the day I do cancer research at Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm. During the night, however, I dive into my world of handmade and digital creations.
My Etsy shop is called Arctida. The name refers to the hypothetical polar continent that is believed to have existed in the geological past of our planet. I was born far up to the North and it felt right to name my shop after a Northern legend.

Q: How long have you been designing and creating jewelry?
I've been designing jewelry for over 9 years now. Gemstones of different colors and shapes are my passion. I started to make my own jewelry as I could not find any fine jewelry with high quality gemstones of different colors here in Sweden. Ever since I stumbled upon Eni Oken and Iza Malczyk tutorials, coiling and wire work have had a major influence on me. I should admit, however, that I occasionally use torch in my creative process as I love to combine styles, techniques and materials. To make life easier for other jewelry designers I started Arctidas Supplies shop on Etsy that sells high quality precious and semiprecious gemstones of different cuts and colors, pearls and precious metal findings. I know how hard it is sometimes to find reliable suppliers that offer quality gemstones.

Q: What inspires you?
My main source of inspiration is Northern nature with its crisp polar nights and gleaming Northern lights. Northern sun almost never goes down during summer days creating unique and beautiful white nights. Our lakes are vast and blue and our sky is infinite. All these beauties are ideal sources of inspiration!
I also enjoy studying Mythology of different cultures and from time to time create pieces of jewelry inspired by different myths, legends and folktales.

Alecia, Thank you for sharing!
Alecia was interviewed by TonyaUtkina

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.

Artisan bread recipe for your holiday dinner

Have you ever tried to bake your own bread? It's not as complicated as you might think. All it takes is time and a dutch oven. It can be a great addition to your holiday dinner as it not only tastes good it looks fantastic!

We love nice and fresh artisan bread the type you cannot find in regular supermarkets. That's why my husband made a simple research on-line one day and found a great New York Times article about baking simple artisan bread at home. We tried to bake our own and the result exceeded all our expectations. From that time on our home baked artisan bread is a staple in our house and my kids simply cannot do without it. We try to bake it once or twice a week as it doesn't last long in our family!


This bread is relatively simple to cook. You will need 500 gr. of unbleached bread flour, 375 gr. of water or 75% of the flour weight, 1 and 1/2 tea spoons of salt and 1/4 tea spoon of yeast. To bake it right you will need a dutch oven that can be actually used for cooking a lot of other fantastic dishes later on.

The secret is in precise measurements! The water amount should not exceed 75% of the flour weight!


We mix up all ingredients just enough for flour to get wet and put the mixture aside for 15-18 hours depending on your room temperature. We, thus, give yeast enough time to work on flour in a natural and old fashioned way.

After full 15-18 hours our raw bread is pretty much ready. We create a baker’s envelop on a table and then form a loaf out of our mixture. The stove should be preheated to 500F and our dutch oven should be already inside hot and ready. If you plan on baking bread don't buy a dutch oven that has anything plastic on it. All this plastic will melt away! And please be careful with that hot dutch oven! It’s very very hot!

The actual cooking time is 30 minutes. After that we leave our dutch oven inside the stove for additional 15 minutes but take the lid off for our bread to get a beautiful and crunchy top crust. It makes sense to decrease the stove temperature to around 420F so that our bread doesn't burn.



That's pretty much it. We always give our bread time to cool down although it is hard to do with our kids circling around. When you bake this artisan bread your home fills with unbelievable aromas that make you think of holidays, family gatherings and feasts.

This bread tastes very good and it's quite simple to bake. It's definitely worth trying!

Holiday house decoration ideas

Holidays are approaching and we all are about to start decorating our houses. There are millions of ways to do it and tones of ideas how to make our homes cozy and beautiful. Here is one of the house decoration ideas for you to consider.

I've been felting for a while now. Let me tell you that it's quite easy to create felted wool balls. It's a matter of rolling felting wool between your palms occasionally wetting it and adding some soap. When squeezed these felted balls take shapes of ovals and fit perfectly into acorn heads. The result looks super cute. These felted wool acorns will last forever unlike real acorns! They could be of different colors and sizes. One can hang it on a Christmas tree, next to a computer, on a book shelf or just put them next to his or her bed.
A good idea is to decorate a holiday table with bowls of felted wool acorns as a tribute to all natural and eco-friendly. For a romantic dinner one can always hang acorns on a beautiful tree branch in a vase, lit a few candles and voila you've got a perfect date!

There are so many ways how wool felted acorns could decorate your house! Just use your imagination and you will add uniqueness and style to your sweet home!

My First Fall GIVEAWAY results

Thank you for participating in my Red Berry handmade earrings Giveaway. Believe it or not but the number generated by Random Generator was 66!

Let us congratulate Lee who won Red Berry handmade earrings today!!! Congratulations Lee!!!

Halloween countdown gifts on Etsy

It's Halloween countdown and we already started decorating our house for the upcoming holiday. My kids are very excited and a bit frightened by all the spiders and witches hanging on our neighbors' doors. It's a lovely holiday and so much fun for both kids and grown-ups. I picked up a few nice Halloween gift and decoration ideas on Etsy to share with everyone looking forward to this great holiday!

I featured the following wonderful Etsy artists in my collection:
CheekieBottoms, FleetingStillness, KarisaGraphic, YuliaKazansky, TonyaUtkina, bumblestore, honeypunk1, TomBjornDesigns, FineEmbroidery, ArtHarmony, socksandmittens, CityCrochet, cushyadornments, katrinshine, graphicland, CuffeShop