Autumn in Stockholm

My neighborhood is magically beautiful!



Yellow leaves over bike paths - this is what autumn means for me



Karlavägen. My love



Himlegården. It's almost evening now.



My new friend



See, the street lamps are already on - the evening is here.
Engelbrektsgatan



And here am I in my favorite coat from a second hand shop.
The best thing about it are it's huge red buttons. And as you know, I love buttons



Cafe60. My favorite place in the north of City. mmm

Bone pendant

My mother-in-law has given me this beauty.
It's a pendant made from raindeer bone.
Amazingly beautiful and gentle. This type of craft is typical for Sami (Lapland indigenous people), nomadic tribes who live in the north of Sweden, Norway and Finland. They have beeing herding raindeers for centuries, mainly for meat and skin.

Bones are used mainly for decoration.



Isn't it gorgeous?

Panduro Competition

Yey! My button necklace / bracelet finished on the 5th place in the competition arranged by Swedish shop for craft supplies PanduroHobby



Here is the competition page

Flee market is LOVE

This weekend we had a 2-kilometer long fl;ee market in Stockholm. People sold EVERYTHING you can only imagine. I was of course, hunting for beads :))

and I was lucky - I found a lot of amazing old necklaces made of glass, stones, wood, shell beads


I am completely happy - now I have an entire treasure!

Autumn - necklace and earrings

summer is still here, but I already look forward to my favourite season


Red, brown and very nostalgic :)

And warm...

for more - see my shop

Lavender, orange and lime - life is perfect!

Lately I am having a "coloful earrings" mood :)
meet my new babies - all crocheted with cotton yarn. Up-cycled wooden beads serve as a basis.

Lavender :)

Orange :)

Lime :)

As always - everything is for sale in my cozy shop.
Every pair is $16.5 free shipping, but you can get any pair of earrings for freee with the purchase of two necklaces :)

Smörgåstårta

When I just came to Sweden I could not get it - why all swedes are so in love with this Smörgåstårta (sandwich cake) - white bread spread with mayonnaise, creme fraice, shrimp, crabsticks, decorated with ham, cheese, eggs, vegetables...

But now, I love it! It is so juicy and fresh (if it is fresh, of course), crispy and fishy..... mmmmmm

This one is home-made - yummmmmmy

Meet my friend - the oak tree

One of the things I love in my apartment - this small balcony and this huge oak tree.
Summer evening is here - just about time to have a cup of warm tea on the balcony.

Enchanted Forest

Meet my new necklace - inspired by nature awakening and by amazingly beautiful landscapes of Wermland - this magical part of Sweden with small rustic farms near enchanted forests where trolls still roam. The kingdom of moose and moss.


The moss on the stones is so soft and gentle that I could stand or sit there for hours, listening to a close-by spring, smelling aromas of awakening forest, hoping to meet a baby-mooseThis necklace features amazing beads of green jasper from a vintage necklace, lovely metallic-colored glass beads and other findings.


Already in my shop :)

Several necklaces together - why not?

Summer is coming and I am working on new designs - lighter, happier and more close to nature.
By the way - who said that they can be worn one at a time?

They can be combined to fit your mood :)

Summer Bells

Fancy a jewelry piece with sound?
This new necklace / bracelet features several little metal bells that blend among other colorful glass and wooden beads and they create gentle chiming sound everytime you move.

Wear it as a collar necklace...

I love these happy paster colors :) They make me happy

as a bracelet

Taking photos

everyone knows that taking good photos is essential, especially if you expose your product online and not in a real live shop.
And so keeping an online shop is a constant process on working with your images, improving the angles, experimenting with backgrounds, waiting for good light, mastering photoshop.

The photoshop part is a bit too much for me. I usually add light and contrast to my images, but ideally I would like to master photoshop so that I could play with the depth of field, designing new backgrounds etc. But well, since I am not a graphical designer, I know just the simplest actions. My plan is to really invest time and effort in it - take books from library, download online workshops.

But let me show you how (in my opinion) the angles of my photos have improved. Let's take the photo of my crocheted earrings.

The first two are "before" pictures. They are not awful, but could be improved.
This one is good because it shoes the exact size of the earrings. But the light is bad!

This image "earrings hanging on the glass" is not a bad idea, but in my case I think it is badly done. The white ballance should be fixed and I find proportions of the mug a bit wrong. Also this matte
This photo on the page of an old book is much much better then the first two. The background is quite, but not plain. The depth of field is shallow, with makes the earrings in the very focus of the image. And the light is neutral - the color of the earrings is exactly like they are in life.

Should earrings be photoed on models? Good question. Those who are against this claim that buyers are turned off by seeing their potential purchase being worn by someone else. But believe me, those who will be turned off are minority, more customers will be attracted to a beautiful model, showing how exactly these earrings will be worn.
But since this issue of taking pictures of earrings on the models is sensitive, make sure that yours is outstanding. So that you definitely can attract more customers than those you will probably turn off. Create a lifestyle in your pictures - the lifestyle that your product represents. In this particular case it is - gentle, innocent, graceful, old-fashioned, beautiful with a touch of fairytale.

And the last tip - if you make several copies of the same item - mention in the description that the item on the model is just for visualization. You customer will receive a completely new and unworn item.

The locks

So many friends, customers and retailers asked me about the locks of my necklaces.
So I decided to make a short post so that later give this link to every one who has questions about the locks.

So here we go - two lobster clasps on each end of my necklaces.


This allows to
- wear the necklace open ended or tie the ends like lariat.

- lock the locks with each other and have several wraps bracelet or necklace. Or belt. Or headband.

- lock each lock on a different part of the string. This is especially useful in wearing my necklaces as tight bracelets. You make one wrap around your hand, lock the first lock in between the beads. Continue wrapping until it sits tight. Then lock the second lock on the part of the string where it reaches. hmm, I hope I have explained it ok!
but I feel that it is about time to start making video tutorial about how to lock my necklaces :))

Basar Under

Another Saturday at Basar Under was lovely - a lot of people, music, homebaked buns and a lot of amazing sellers.

People we looking, touching, playing with my necklaces. Some were buying. I must say this "live2 selling is very exciting!

Here is me (photo by Basar Under)

Adventures in snowy Oslo

couple of weeks ago, while it was still

Couple of weeks ago, while it was still winter here in Scandinavia, we went to Oslo.
And believe me it was one of the best weekends this winter. The entire Saturday we spent going with sledges down the hill. Then we took metro up, and down with the wind again.
I didn't have proper clothes, so I had to use an old and huge skiing jacket

The mountains around Oslo-fjord were sun-washed and full of crispy snow. Truly winter paradise.



Our happy and tired faces.

and the evening highlight was national Norwegian cuisine - Pizza.
Didn't you know that Norwegians think that they invented it?
Well, given that pizza was amazing, we can agree with Norwegians!

Crocheting around beads

Just a bit more about crocheting around beads and upcycling vintage necklaces.
These beads I got from my follower in exchange for one of the necklaces from my shop (she also included a bunch of buttons, and I am so grateful! I will surely find how o use them!)

The best thing about crocheting around beads is that you can use the little leftovers. Amazing way to utilize the destash.

and there can be made so many beautiful jewelry pieces out of those beads.