Gifts

This year, almost every Christmas-gift we gave, was handmade by me :-) 

My goal was only/mainly to use things I had at home  (yarn, wax, paper...)

What I like about handmade gifts is, that you put so much thought into it - you can choose the perfect yarn, perfect color, perfect picture, perfect words, perfect button, perfect beads, perfect pattern, perfect herb-combination (salve) - depending on the recipient.

Unfortunately I didn´t make pictures of everything - but here are some of the things I made: 

This Pan-collar (my own pattern) was made for a little girl in Sweden 

yarn: acryl-yarn from Trysil (soft&shiny)

button: vintage button from my collection (yes, I actually have a button-collection)

I made this hat up for the same little girl

yarn: soft wool from Trysil

butterfly-pearls from Tiger (you could use them as buttons too)

 I made 3 of those in different colors. Once I started knitting this pattern, I just couldn´t stop making those hats :-) it was so much fun - easy, quick and so cute! It´s a really good project if you want to use up some yarn from your stash

yarn: Álafosslopi

pattern: Capucine by Adela, a free pattern found here

 I also made those candles - I bought big, white candles (ódýrust í Bónus), 

found some pretty pictures on the internet

found the perfect font on dafonts.com

used Illustrator for the rest (took some colors from the pictures for the letters and surrounding outside of the picture)

 The words on the other side of the candle mean:

friður = peace

kærleikur = love

styrkur = strength

sæla = happiness 

... and this is my wish for the recipient...

I also made some candles in a cup, slippers, another collar and more...
Did you make any Christmas-gifts this year???

Christmas is coming...

I´ve been busy creating different things lately.

The first thing I want to tell you about is our new advent-candle-holder. I really love driftwood and I found this beautiful piece in the north of Iceland about 2 years ago. I took it with me because I loved it, without knowing what I was going to do with it. Right now, I´m so glad I did! 

Using my pretty piece of driftwood, old candle-holders with a needle at the bottom - the ones you would normally use for candle-wreaths (like those) & tiny wooden stars I bought at Laugarvegur (púkó og smart) I made this really simple and natural-looking advent-candle-holder. :-)   

Ooooohhhh how I love it...

Kría

The second thing I want to tell you about is my second Kria-shawl - what a wonderful project... you can work on it everywhere and in almost every situation (except maby while driving or sleeping)... 

you can take a look at my first one in this post and on Raverly. 

yarn: my own, handdyed einband (icelandic wool), dyed with different kind of plants

made for: my lovely friend Rodrigo for his birthday

Button: from my "button-stash"

And now to my nr. 3: my candle-decorating. 

How I did it: 

1. I found some lovely pictures on pinterest (you can find them over there in my "jól" board), printed them out (normal paper, landscape layout, with black ink only) 

2. Cut the picture out in the right size, depending on your candle

3. Finally, I mod-podged my candle about 3 times, glued the picture on the candle and mod-podged it from the outside. 

It has been burning for a few days now, the paper has still not gone up in flames and we really love the way it looks... 

I´m thinking about making some special designs, using Illustrator as Christmas-gifts...

candle making

The other day, my oldest sister gave me a huge amount of wax for candle making. The special thing about this wax is, that it used to belong to our beloved grandmother Guðný who passed away 1996. Our grandmother used to make a lot of beautiful candles and when she died, my oldest sister started using this wax for her own candle-making. My sister has not been making candles for many years now and gave it to me, knowing I really wanted to start candle crafting with my boys. I guess, one could say we´re going to keep this wonderful tradition alive.

I had a lot of fun making my first 4 simple, little candles and now I´m fantasizing about what kind of things I could use as molds, candle-colours, different kind of decoration-possibilities (leaves, pictures, candle-stickers...), scenting candles, candle-dipping...

A treasure: the only two candles I´ve got left, made by my grandmother 

(takk elsku besta Lóa mín - ég get ekki sagt þér hvað þú gladdir mig mikið með þessu!) 

my first candles, using old candle holders from a thrifstore

I really love those two - I used 2 pretty cups I found in a thriftstore to make them... I´ll be hunting for more cups like this... they´ll make great gifts...  

I found out, I could use the old cups and candle-holders as molds too, because it´s so easy to get the candles out of them - and than they look like this: 

I just had to show you this wonderful little thrift found of mine: a cute little 50'ies/60´ies bear, who now gets to keep my rings safe (the doily is an old thrift found too)