Crafty presents

Later this week it is my wedding anniversary. I much prefer giving and receiving homemade presents, be it baked goods, preserves, hand made cards or whatever. It just shows you put that much more effort into making something specifically for that person, rather than just going and buying a gift certificate to the mall or something along those lines (although I am rather fond of bookstore gift certificates).

I think my hon is going to make me a nice dinner, which I am completely happy with. I have just finished making his/our presents, which is matching necklaces. I've made them from sodalite beads, which is a lovely blue and white stone,

interspersed with small sterling silver beads.

I saw leaves electroplated with silver, and ordered some, but they were not what I anticipated. They kind of felt like something pressed in tin foil. They looked and felt cheap.

So after much looking around, found some really nice silver oak leaves and got those. Bonus is that our wedding bands are stylized silver oak leaves!

Way nicer, huh? So a bit of work later, and the finished project:

What do you think? Pretty swank, huh?

It's a rainy day off for me, so now I'm off to bake a cake. If the recipe turns out, I'll post that too.