Hanging Alpine bells

Here's a great way of displaying souvenir cowbells from your travels in Austria or Switzerland. But I can't take credit for the idea - my Mum made hers many years ago!

My Mum's display of Swiss bells on a ribbon is one of my favourite things at my parents' house. So when I went to Austria I knew I'd have to get some bells of my own. Finding the bells was more difficult than I'd thought, and finding the ribbon even harder, but eventually I had all the materials for making a display. Or, at least, enough for a display of two bells... I later found another in a charity shop to fill out the display a bit.

You'll need about 2 feet of ribbon (preferably with an edelweiss design!), a D ring, at least 3 bells, and a needle and thread.

1. Fold the ribbon in half and thread the largest bell and the D ring on it. Sew the ends of the ribbon together. (You can use just a single length of ribbon as Mum did, but I felt doubling it over would give added strength to it).

2. Position the D ring at the top, the large bell at the bottom, and the join in the ribbon just behind the D ring. Add a line of stitching to keep the D ring in place.

3. Sew the smallest bell near the top, and the other bells at equal distances down the ribbon. As you can see from the photo below, Mum used a little loop of ribbon to attach each of her bells, but I just used a few stitches to attach mine.

4. If you have some ribbon left over, you can make a bow to go at the top.

Note - if you're using a charity shop bell like I did, and it has the name on it of a place you haven't been, you can remove this with a cotton bud dipped in nail varnish remover!