Thanks ya'll, so much. I love working with the silver plated flatware,so many projects you can make for your garden and to wear. I use 1/16" drill bits with my cordless drill. I am ashamed to say I have a Dremel and I never use it( don't tell the DH!!) I use the same size for drilling my bracelets and for drilling my wind chimes, and Scrabble tiles. For the wind chimes, I use beading wire and crimping beads that I use my pliers to tighten after I string the beads on(two crimping beads). I have a small 4x4 block of wood I use to do my work on, like drilling holes, or flattening silverware (soften it by sandwiching it between some old towels or soft cloth to prevent tool marks)I curl the fork tines by flattening them with my ball peen hammer(this seems to make the metal softer,too) and using my pliers to twist them. If you have a vise it's much easier. If you're selling bracelets, it does go much further using one handle,LOL! My DH bought me some of the magnetic clasps,those are so nice,but get expensive after a while :) The spoon pendant with the copper swirl is an old copper earring that was my mothers. I also printed out a picture of some brown velvet and glued that in the bottom of the spoon before I set the earring in it. The flatware pins are short tips of the handle, with a hole drilled in the bottom for a charm, some are not drilled, I glued bead fringe on them. I use very small porcelain roses I chop off of trinket boxes I buy at TS's and yard sales( I use those in my mosaics for inside and in the garden,too)I use a flathead screwdriver and hit it with a hammer to break flowers off the trinket boxes. Hopefully they break off clean,if they are broken just a little, I'll glue them back together with superglue and it holds up really well. And glue on pearls and beads with those, with E6000,onto the pin,glue a pin back on with E6000,too. I use silver plated coasters or trays, the small ones, to hang my wind chimes from, and I will sometimes glue the porcelain roses and beads with E6000 onto the tray. The "pixie" or "fairy" jars are old blue canning jars I collect. You can use anything,even the frappicino milk bottles. I use photoshop to make wings on the photos, you could find wings online and print them out and cut them and glue them to the back of the photos. I go to Walmart to print them out sometimes, it's about 12 cents a photo,saves my printer ink. Then I used glitter glue pens to decorate them,maybe some rhinestones,what have you...and cut them out.I kinda curled the photo to make it fit flat against the front of the jar, and the filler holds it up more. I think I got the blue Easter grass or gift bag filler at a yard sale in a box of things I bought...but that's what I used, the pearly kind.I used adhesive velcro tabs inside the lid to hold a battery operated votive for the light. They looked great outside, but I finally brought them back in. You could use other paper sent through your paper shredder for filler ( sheet music is pretty)or old book pages. I gave these to my daughter and ex DIL for Christmas. Sorry this was so long...I hope it helped!

Karen! Look what you've started!! This chalk thing was my project for today. I made some tiles using the white pearl clay and chalked with a rainbow of colors. Ahhh... Rainbow is my FAVORITE color! :-) I really like how they turned out, but I didn't make enough to do a bracelet or anything, so I haven't scanned them yet. Then, since I had some black scraps on my work surface from yesterday, I had to find out what would happen with bright chalks on black clay. I used copper PearlEx, too, and left a heavy dusting of chalk on the clay. Below is the link to 2 of my finished experiments. Thanks SO much for sharing this technique! I LOVE it! There were my clay and my chalks just a shelf away from each other in the craft closet and I would never have thought to put them together! Here is a link that might be useful: My chalked black clay things

I just want to thank you all for everything. My hubby is the cook in our family. This design is with him in mind. Since he liked the sample I showed him, I didnt want to let him down or at least find a comparable option. This project was becoming so overwhelming. Not be able to find such a key piece of my design plan, my family and friends were about to abandon me because this is all I talked about. Everyone's answers were its no big deal its just the counter top. That was making me even more nervous and sad. I really appreciate everything. Again, thank you all.

It is SO nice to see a small kitchen designed so beautifully! It is wonderful! I was always a "wood" girl, but in the last couple of years have gotten so tired of my old oak cabinets (but have no budget for replacement) that I think I'm going to paint them. Either a creamy white or a light gray/green. Most people (including a good number on this site) have no idea how small some real kitchens can be! Mine is barely 9'x10' but because the adjoining dining room is also small it really leaves no room for a proper island. Unless I do THAT room over too and that's not going to happen! But maybe I need to brainstorm to find a way. Thanks for the inspiration!