Work in Progress

I still have several Czech art glass buttons in my stash and they were easier to get to than my collection of stone cabochons, so I picked out another one to design around for my next project. This one has such beautiful shades of blue violet and lavendar! And if you know me, you know I'm a sucker for anything purple. After studying it a bit, I decided to make a cuff bracelet using the button as a focal. Found a lovely dark blue violet seed beed in my stash along with a complementing hue of purple to use for the base colors. The button has some silver in it too so I decided to accent with silver seed beads and silver firepolish crystals. So far I have the cuff a little over half finished but I haven't decided yet how I want to finish the button. Shall I bezel it and then stitch it to the cuff or should I leave it unadorned and stitched to the center of the cuff? Will have to play a bit, I guess, to come to a conclusion.

Silver Bells and Cockle Shells

Anyone who knows me well will tell you that my thumb is definitely not green. In fact, I have even been known to bring about the demise of the ever popular, practically indestructible, philodendron. I do have a lovely stand of dandelions and chickweed in my yard, but that doesn't seem to impress my neighbors. But in spite of this, I keep trying to beautify my environment. We finally got a break in the rainy spring weather we've been having so I got ambitious this last week and bought up some plants to set out. I've found that I have the best luck with plants when I put them in containers although the shade and rock garden I started two years ago is still looking quite nice. I added an astilbe plant and two forget-me-nots to it this week. I love the magical, mythical characters of fairies and gargoyles and such and several habitate in my garden areas. I found a new fairy this spring at the craft show I did. She's a rustic metal silhouette and looks quite at home in the shade garden next to the new astilbe plant. My containers look at little sparse yet but I'm hoping they will fill in nicely as the summer progresses. I'm kind of wishing I'd gotten one of the hanging geraniums I've pictured for myself. This one is going to my mom's tomorrow for Mother's Day.