I was itching to do something crafty and at the same time wanted to go window shopping and also wanted to bake, so I did something in the middle.

I made flour beads!

OK...more like pendants.

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If you want to make them, it's easy.Here's the recipe which I found online, and made a few adjustments.

1) Mix 4 cups of flour with 1 cup of salt and 1 1/2 cup of water.

2) Knead together and then put in the fridge so that they are easier to form.

3) Form the dough into your preferred patterns. Poke a hole in them if you want to use as pendants or beads (I tried twisting a screw through one of them after baking, but that broke the pendant)

Also, I recommend only taking out a little dough at the time from the fridge, because the dough softens quickly in room temperature. If you want to make more complicated designs, coating the dough with flour makes it less sticky and coating it with water makes it more adhesive.

4) Put the finished designs on a baking tray. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius and bake for around 20 mins, or until they are hard.

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Here's how they look like after being baked. They look and smell like cookies. I was so tempted to eat them.

And here they are after being painted.
Closeup on a pair that I want to make into earrings, if I can find those sterling silver hooks. Unfortunately my ears are sensitive to the standard hooks (or else I would currently be owning a few dozen of those made-in-Korea dangly stuff).

I wrote the starting few lines of Little Red Riding Hood on this pair. Bad handwriting, I know.
Some that look nice, eventhough by accident. The grapes got that gradual shading because of uneven heat during baking. The heart is crackled because the wet paint warped the dough, so it cracked when it dried.
Mini doughnuts! These were fun to make. Made using gesso primer and gold dust.