Slowfashion and handmade things

My grandmothers sister taught me how to make the traditional tinbracelets. The handicraft itself comes from the sami, the aboriginals of Sweden but the area where I´m from has close ties to them. In Tornevalley we as landowners are allowed to buy a reindeer mark and own up to 30 reindeers. The leather of the tinbracelets are reindeer leather, the buttons are made from the tips of their antlers.

The cuffs in the pictures are designs of my own. Im a shoemaker by trade but I do all sorts of handicraft.

These shoes, siepakka, are made from reindeer fur - it takes one front leg and one back leg to make one shoe. The pattern is made so that no part of the leg goes to waste. The beak on the shoe has a purpose - to hold the skiis in place. Back in the day the skiis had a leather strap and you stuck your shoe in to them and the beak held them in place.
These are the first pair I made. I contacted a older gentleman named Inge and asked if he could teach me, not only did he agree to teach me but invited me (and my 2 dogs!) to live with him and his wife for a week while he taught me how to skin, tan, scrape, cut and sew these shoes together.

These beak boots are the first pair of handmade goodyear welted shoes I´ve made. I combined the look of a finnish beak boot with the look of the tornevalley beak shoe. The ankle straps are a design of my own. Like the fur boots the beak is to keep the skiis in place.

I love learning old crafts, to keep the traditions alive but also to make my own version of them. And I really like making things by hand, it is slower but it makes you appriciate the process of making the item and the item itself.