Advent Candlestick

This weekend I want to show you one of my Christmas crafts to make December a little more personal. I made a advent canlestick out of "salt dough" forming it like a braid and decorated it with typically "Christmas-things" like gingerbread heart, trees and presents. My thought was to place one thing for each candle until you reach Christmas (and sometimes the 4th advent is the 24th of December and that is the "big celebration day" in Sweden. 
1st advent candle 1 = Gingerbread
2nd advent candle 2 = Christmas trees
3d advent candle 3 = Lucia crown (13th of December)
4th advent candle 4 = Christmas presents

On this picture homemade saffron buns - it does not get more Christmas than that! 

Recipe for the "salt dough"
2 deciliter salt (as fine as possible)
3 deciliter water
3 teaspoons ordinary cooking oil
6 deciliter flour

Mix salt, water, oil and flour and stirr until you get a smooth dough. Be careful when adding the flour little by little and feel with your hands so the dough does not get dry. Now the dough is ready to work with!

If the dough is too dry your things may get a cracked surface so it is important that you add more water to the dough if that happens. You can also put water on your fingertips and gently rubb the surface and the cracks will get smoother.
I wanted to make the braid look like bread so I brushed the braid surface with beaten egg. 

When you are happy with the things you have created it is time to dry them so they get hard so you then eventually can color them. This advent candlestick took a long time to get really dry, I think I put it in the oven on 80 Celcius (don't use higher temperature because it can cause the dough to crack) for 8 hours because it is quite thick. I also used a oven with convection.

To make the braid I used about 3/4 of the dough and used 1/4 for the small things on top.
I bought light cuffs from my craft store and I pushed them into braid before drying it in the oven.
When the candlestick was dry I painted the small things with acrylic paint, I like the texture of acrylic paint because it covers very well and you don't need to use chemicals to clean your brush.
When the paint is dry you should varnish all surfaces to get a nice shiny finish and to protect against liquids (salt dough can not withstand water). I used a semi-gloss waterbased varnish from Panduro Hobby (click on the name to get to their English homepage!)

To make the knobbly surface of the trees and the Lucia crown I used a tweezer.

Here is the candlestick ready to go into the oven.To secure the trees I put a toothpick into them and pushed into the braid for support. But you can see in next picture that one tree bend down a bit anyway.

Here it is dry and ready to be painted. 

You can see that the braid has a bit more yellow surface because of the egg.

Red Plaid Christmas Apron

Now when we are getting closer to Christmas I thought it would be fun to have some Christmas-inspired crafts these few weeks before the big holiday of the year :) When I was little my mother had an apron she only wore during Christmas. She had sewed it by herself and I remember it was striped in red colors. I was inspired by that apron and I wanted one for myself! My apron is not extravagant in any way, it is clean and simple, but I think many like it simple and it suits everyone!
So lets go! Below you can find a tutorial in pictures and text step by step, I hope you like it :)
(You can click on the pictures to make them larger)

 

Knitted Slippers with Roses

Now when the days are getting colder and we get closer to the winter it is nice to warm up cold feet in warm slippers. I found these cuties on DropsDesignStudio (click here to go to the free pattern) and now my feet can be warm all winter! These slippers are very easy to knit, basically you just need to know how to do garter stitch and decrease. I crocheted two flowers, same pattern as I used in this post, to make the slippers a bit more girly. I had both pink and purple yarn at home at the time and since I LOVE these colors it was a natural color choice :)

Happy knitting!

Drawing Maleficent (Angelina Jolie)

The Walt Disney Pictures movie Maleficent is one of the latest Disney movies that I really enjoyed. Click here to learn more about this movie on IMDb. I think the story of this movie is a great twist to the old fairytale Cinderella when the witch is the bad guy and you never really know why. But in this movie you get to know her and even feel sympathy for her.
I think Angelina Jolie is a great actress and even if she is not my favourite I think she is giving this character full life.  

I made this drawing on ordinary sketch paper using lead pencils. I am not very fancy when it comes to lead pencils, I often use a bright pencil like B or F to do the contours at the first stages, fill them in with something in the middle like 2B or 3B to get the details and when I am done with that I get crazy with the black and use a 5B or 6B to color the real dark areas. When I started drawing many years ago I never dared to use the dark pencils because I was scared I would destroy the drawing I was happy with. That often resulted in pale motifs without the "wow-effect" - yes quite boring. Today I know that shadows and dark areas are the only true things that makes a drawing come to life! The goal I have with my drawings is to make the viewer feel invited to look at it more than just one time and I think I pulled it off quite good this time because of the shadows and her interesting eyes.

I almost always look at a real photo of the character I am drawing because I am not very good at seeing the person in my head. There are people who are amazing with the photograhic memory and I am deeply impressed with them, I can't understand how they do it. Anyway, I like using photographs because I get to really study the person's lines and characteristics in their faces. For instance, you look at a picture of Angelina Jolie and at first sight you think she must have a very straight and sharp nose or the lips and eyes have the same shape on both left and right side if you would divide her face in the middle. But no. There are many differences in her face and I if I had not payed attention to them I most definately would not had suceeded to make my drawing look like her. So my advice, if you would like any, is to look at the details and trust the differences you see, because if you just make assumptions without really looking you will fail with your work. I have made that mistake countless times.

Syrup Bread

The household economy in my home is getting a bit strained since I recently lost my beloved job (as a result of an unexpected reorganization in the company) and now it is the time to think smart and economic and make priorities.

I have realized that buying bread in the store is actually very expensive if you compare the price to how much it costs to bake the bread at home. Two loaves of bread with basically same ingredients as the bread I will show you today would probably cost about 50 Swedish crowns here in Sweden (= 6,46 USD or 4 British Pounds). However, when I bake two loaves I only pay about 12 Swedish crowns (= 1,29 USD or 0,8 British Pounds). It may sound like I am poking in pennies here but when you buy eight loaves each month it is a big difference between 480 Swedish crowns (51,7 USD or 32 British Pounds) for buying bread and 96 Swedish crowns (10,3 USD or 6,4 British Pounds) for baking your own.

I am sure you are thinking "Sure, I could bake if I wanted to but it is often so time consuming...!" Yes, you are right in some way beacuse many types of bread can take a long time to make, but this recipe I will show you today is not one of those long term baking experiences you fear, this is a little joy :)

This recipe comes from the book "Bröd: från bagels till tunnbröd" by Göran Söderin och George Strachal. Here you can find the book on the Swedish online book store Adlibris.

Syrup Bread

25 grams of fresh yeast

3 deciliter room temperatured water

10 grams room temperatured butter

1 deciliter dark syrup

5 grams salt

450 grams sifted rye flour with wheat

150 grams wheat flour

Put your oven to 200 Celsius.

Dissolve the yeast in the water.

Add the butter and stirr it into the yeast mixture together with the syrup.

Mix the two types of flour and the salt in a seperate bowl and then add it little by little while you work it into the yeast/water mixture. 

Work the dough with your hands until it feels smooth. 

Let the dough rest for 30 minutes. (excellent time to walk the dog or check your Instagram/Facebook ;) )

Divide the dough in two  and put them into two bread baking pans (1,5 L or 2 L) and let them rise under a towel until they double in size (approximately 1 hour)

Bake for 20 minutes or until the inner temperature (use a digital termometer) is 98 Celcius.

Dark Green Baby Socks

It was quite a long time ago I knitted something and last week I felt I really wanted to start a new project. Since my inspiration was low and I had not much time I thought I would try to knit baby socks because they are small and easy. Once again I fell in love with knitting as soon as I started and I could not stop until they were finished. It is a big mystery why I think it is so much fun but that is how it is.

This pattern is easy to understand and you don't have to know all kinds of techniques.  Here you can find the link to the free pattern at Drops Designstudio's homepage. If you would like to read the pattern in a different language you can choose your language in the flag menu at left side just below the picture.

The yarn I am using is Read Heart Soft Baby Steps 100% acrylic. I like acrylic yarn because the colors are so intensive and the yarn shines very pretty. 

Happy knitting everyone!

Blueberry Pie

Is there anything better than pie and vanilla custard a sunny autumn afternoon with a cup of coffee or tea to warmen you up? No, I don't think so, especially blueberry pie. Blueberries are one of the forest's finest treasures, both tasty and healthy, and they are so useful for many things.
This recipe is easy and it does not need too much preperations, the total amount of time is about one hour so it is a perfect pie to make after breakfast on Saturday morning to get freshly baked pie to the eleven o'clock coffee break (at least in Sweden coffee at eleven o'clock is a general phenomenon).

Blueberry Pie

Crust
2,5 deciliter flour
1 deciliter sugar
0,5 teaspoon baking powder
150 grams margarine or butter 
2 tablespoons of water

Filling
4 deciliter blueberries(frozen or fresh)
1/2 deciliter sugar 

Put your oven to 175 Cecius. 

Mix flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl. Add the margarine in little cubes. Use your fingers to form a dough and then add the water to make the dough not crumble. 
When finished put the dough in a plastic bag in the fridge for about 20 minutes, or the freezer for about 10 minutes, to cool it a bit (it is easier to work with it if is is a bit cool).

Divide the dough in two and distribute one of them into a pie dish (approximately 26 centimeter in diameter) by pushing the dough with your palm and fingers to cover the whole bottom of the dish. Bake it in the oven for 8 minutes. 

Put the dish out of the oven and sprinkle the blueberries over the crust so you get it totally filled. Then add the sugar on top of the blueberries.

Now take the second and final part of the dough and by using your fingers take small pieces at the time and spread them over the blueberries until they are almost covered. The dough is containing baking powder so the little pieces will swell a bit while baking in the oven.

Put the pie into the oven at 175 Celcius for about 25 minutes or until the crust is getting a nice golden color.