My mother has two Papillon dogs, Stash and Wager, who are stars of the agility ring (not to mention stars of lazing around on the couch). The name Papillon (which is French for butterfly) comes from their butterfly-like ears. Naturally this leads to any number of gift possibilities, including my necklace creations.

For my mom’s birthday gift, a few days before Christmas, I ordered a couple of dog bone-shaped stamping pieces and stamped them with the dogs’ names, then added a butterfly charm and pieced it together with some chain taken from a Goodwill necklace.

And for Christmas, I was delighted to find a gorgeous butterfly centerpiece at an estate sale. Then I chose white, black and rust beads to match the dogs’ colors.

She was thrilled with both. The personalized one with the dogs’ names was the biggest hit, which tells me I should put some focus on upgrading my stamping-and-personalization skills for future use …