progress and some gratuitous cuteness

this piece is slowly coming together

like many of the pieces that I have done that involve some kind of stone cabochons, I use the colors in the stone to define the rest of the piece

these two pieces of malachite are very dark green with only a bit of lighter green in them in a sort of "bulls eye" pattern, so I'm keeping the color palette in that monochromatic green

to get some texture into the design, I added some larger, carved frosted glass beads there on the left hand side (the DH referred to it as "the shamrock") -- in some ways it is more difficult to create a pleasing design when working in just one color, so it's been an artistic challenge

and here we have some gratuitous cuteness for the morning

he was attacking a big ladybug pillow and laughing when this picture was taken


so cute!