We spent our honeymoon exploring Scandinavia. We loved Denmark, Sweden and Norway and hope we can go back one day. As well as lots of happy memories we came back with quite a few souvenirs from the different cities we visited, many of which were scandinavian gnomes, also known as tomtes or nisse.

A tomte is a mythological creature from Scandinavian folklore, typically associated with the winter solstice and the Christmas season. As our honeymoon took place in late October it probably wasn’t surprising that the shops were full of these little creatures! We’ve faithfully put them out each year at Christmas as a happy reminder of our travels.

I’ve seen lot of gnomes around this Christmas so thought it would be fun to make some painted rock gnomes. It’s been a while since we painted any rocks but these are now ready to be hidden around where we live.

We used:

Bag of smooth pebbles or rocks

Selection of posca pens

Varnish to seal the painted rocks (we use Wilko Gloss Yacht Varnish)

Christmas gnome painted rocks

We keep a stash of smooth pebbles which have been carefully washed and dried, this makes sure the surface is just right for painting.

There are lots of different styles of gnomes so I tried to make lots of different ones. There was even a colourful toadstool.

When our painted rocks were dry we gave them a coat of Wilko Gloss Yacht Varnish to seal them for being hidden outside.

This takes about 24 hours to dry but gives the rocks a really lovely shine. We made sure to add our local hashtag so we can hide them around our local library. Hopefully they will get found soon.

You may be interested in our other Christmas painted rocks:

Gingerbread house painted rocks

Gingerbread man story stones