Very, very pretty love the beads with the gold. Nana, I finally found a gold flatware set that I could afford the other day, I've been looking forever. I got service for 12 and all the serving pieces for $35.00, of course it's not going in the yard. Frou

Kathy, your wind chime is very,very pretty. The topper was a clever idea, (no drilling!) I like the way you left the flatware natural, it has an antique quality about it that is very appealing, but I will have to try flattening it out next time, (thx, butterbeanbaby)just for something different and to see if it sounds better. I made one several years ago and the fishing line just started breaking this last year. I recently got some old flatware and have wanted to re-string my old one and make another one for our veggie garden. So all the info has been so helpful. t-fern, all I gotta say is " yeehaw, girl"!!Those are beautiful, great talent and beautiful colors!Love the sunflowers and sand dollars! blessings-sherri

countrygrl, the regular spoons and tea spoons are real easy to hammer flat. I put the spoons on a board and then used a short handled hammer with a wide head. You just have to flip them a few times to get them perfectly flat. Soup spoons are a bit harder to flatten though. To shape the fork I used a bench mounted clamp/brace (can't think of the right name) to get the tines pointing in the different directions and then used needle nosed pliers to shape them. I flattened the spoons and shaped the fork all in one evening while I was watching TV.

Thanks - I did buy more pieces of Fidelis on eBay, so I will have the grille knives and some spoons as well as WAAAYYY too many forks (since the set came with grille forks that I already had). I don't think I'll try to buy dinner or salad forks for that set - or not unless a set of 8 or more salad forks falls into my lap. I don't think it's necessary to have both dinner forks and grille forks. But I only have gumbo/cream spoons in Fidelis, the place spoons are Imperial so I will have to use that set if serving a bouillon (but as I said, I don't often serve a soup course). I'm a person who prefers to use a teaspoon to eat soup (my everyday stainless doesn't have cream spoons) just b/c place spoons are too big. But this morning I won another auction for nearly a complete set of Imperial for $38 incl shipping so now I will have 8 salad forks (and 8 gumbo spoons) so don't have to mix patterns as long as there aren't more than 8 people (all my DR can comfortably hold, though I have more leaves for the table and can bring in 4 kitchen chairs to seat 12). Any more than 8 and we'd have to move the buffet server that's at one end, and the person at that end would be up against the wall and off the Oriental carpet that's under the table. So I'd probably do 8 adults in DR and 4 kids in kitchen and it doesn't matter if place settings match. But now I will have 22 grille forks in Fidelis and 9 in Imperial (plus dinner forks in Imperial), 11 grille knives in Fidelis and 12 (8 modern, 4 French) in Imperial so unless I resell some, I'll have enough to set a huge buffet if I could ever fit that many people in my house LOL! Maybe we'll use them for DS's graduation party in 2016 - as long as people don't throw them in the trash! I figured the Imperial, being a floral, would go to DD and the Fidelis to DS when I'm ready to pass them along.