Earth laughs in flowers!

Well, I hope y'all had a chance to take a peek at last night's jaw-droppingly gorgeous vintage dress. Scroll on down, it's drool-worthy, and anyone who sees you and the reason for the drool won't blame you.

Moving on (to something that wouldn't even hope to dream of going with that dress), I saw this pretty beaded flower necklace the other day and was looking forward to sharing it with you tonight. Made of brown wooden beads - have I mentioned yet how I really like the warmth of wooden beads? - with faceted purple and brown glass beads, green glass potato beads, bronze glass pearls, and a few other beads, the obvious calling card of this necklace is the beautiful large flower pendant. You might be able to wear this pendant to one side instead of dead center for a little interest; it's made of purple glass drop beads with a large bronze glass pearlescent bead in the center, surrounded by a few more pretty green beads to add some life to the pendant. Artist Gillyflower finished this off with a silver plated lobster clasp and silver extension chain finished off with another pretty bead. While it can be worn short - hitting right below the collarbone - it can also be worn longer thanks to the extension chain.

As you know, purple is typically considered the colour of royalty, and we've already talked about the wonderfulness of green. Purple is associated with nobility, luxury, power, wisdom and ambition - fitting, since many of the world's great past leaders liked to wear purple. I suspect the colour's associations came along after a few powerful and well-heeled wearers began to take to it! The dye to create purple - a rare colour in nature - was expensive and rather difficult to produce (it takes about 12,000 mollusks to make 1.5 grams of pure purple dye), so it stands to reason that for much of our sartorial history, only the powerful and wealthy could afford it; purple apparel was literally worth its weight in gold. Many Christians associate Israel's King Solomon with purple, as he used great amounts of purple textiles in the Temple at Jerusalem. Also, if my memory serves me, many past popes wore purple regularly as well.

It wasn't until the mid-1800s that purple became available to everyone. While the mystique of purple is somewhat gone, it still evokes thoughts of wealth, royalty, and nobility in most people - old habits die hard!


A mere $18 at Gilyflower, where you'll find some truly lovely, ladylike jewelry that always has a really fun twist (like these cute earrings). It's the kind of stuff that makes people look twice - first, it's "Oh, how pretty!" and then, "Wait a minute...look at that! How cool!" Wearing jewelry that makes the people looking at you smile, too, is always a good thing, since of course we all want to spread joy and be a blessing to those around us, even if it's just something small like this that makes them smile for a little bit ('tis the little things that count).

Enjoy!