Tucson Gem Show 2015, Part III

In my last post, I shared a little about struggling to find the "right" gems - right heights, right quality, right price. Today I'll share some gems that seemed abundantly available for me this year...the Peruvian opals.

Last year I'd bought a big ol' bunch of pendant-sized gems, and a few pairs for earrings. As it turned out, the pendants moved much more slowly than the earrings. By the end of the year, I was nearly sold out of earring gems. So this year I was on a big mission for earring pairs, and I hit a motherlode.

The photo above is just a random sampling of my haul. Most of the gems not shown are smaller, but all of these gorgeous beauties will make stellar earrings. And they're not heavy, thick cuts. And they're LOVELY. I love my turquoise, but seeing a whole bunch of Peruvians together makes me really, really happy. :)

Since I still had a few pendant gems left, I told myself I could only buy what really, truly made my heart sing. I try to do that anyway - choosing what I consider only "the best" makes it easier to cull through the thousands of gems I view at the shows - but this year I was super-picky about non-earring-sized gems.

I did find these:

which I adore for their translucency (though I usually prefer more opaque color) and their organic shapes. And these:

which hit me right in the gut. I knew they were definitely worth a little splurge. :)

Nearly all the Larimar in yesterday's post, and all of the Peruvian opals from today's post come from the same gem dealer. In years past. they've had displays at three locations in the Tucson Gem show; this year they consolidated to just one. Which made things a little easier and a little more difficult, because I went out of my way to one specific show just to see them, and spent the previously mentioned three hours looking through tons and tons of gems. It's a huge time-suck, because there are so many other places I need to get to - but it's utterly worth it.

I also found just a *few* pairs of boulder turquoise for earrings. The mine for these closed several years ago, and all the rough has been cut up, so new stock in these patterns are nonexistent. But in digging through the bins, I did come across these:

they were hidden away at the bottom of a bin. And now they're safely here in the studio.  :)

Tucson Gem Show 2015, Part II

The trickiest things about using one of a kind gems in your jewelry designs, is that sometimes you can really find what you need...ahem, *want*, easily and at the right price, like yesterday's turquoise...and sometimes you can't. This year, a few of my "regular" buys were harder to come by.

Larimar,for example, can be tricky to find. Last year the price skyrocketed and I really had to do some hunting to find what I needed. I had similar problems this year; the prices were better BUT the gems were cut really, really thick, which I don't like. A thicker cut usually means a few things:

- a sloppier or less experienced cutter

- a more expensive purchase (and not in a good way) Thicker cabs mean that I pay more for the raw material weight, then I have to use more metal to bezel the gems, which means my customers also will pay more overall. Which I don't like, which is why I look for thinner cabochons. :)

- a lesser quality gem - sometimes it seems like poor quality is "made up for " by cutting thicker gems. But I don't want "more gem, less quality" I'd rather have better quality material.

These in the photo are nice and "svelte"and the corners are well done. I am finding the patterns in the new gems coming out of the Caribbean so much more interesting than some of the earlier material that was simply straight-up blue. These patterns are fabulous!

I also found it hard to find the "right" matched pairs of Larimar for earrings. Either there simply weren't any available, or they were way too spendy for my plans. Or too thick - which, in addition to the issues I mentioned above, often means that the gems will be far too heavy for comfortable earrings. I get a lot of comments about how my earrings are comfortable to wear, and I take pride in making that part of my design prioritites. So thick gems for earrings are really just not an option.

Actually, this year I ended up making some of my own matched pairs, out of some huge bins of random gems. I sorted through entire bins to find cuts and color patterns that matched up:

I spent three hours at one dealer's location. For an eight hour shopping day (minus travel time), that's a chunk. But between the Larimar and the Peruvian opals I'll show you later, all thatt time did not go unrewarded. :)

Tucson Gem Show 2015, Part I

Time for the annual review of the Tucson Gem show, the largest show in the world for showing, selling, and buying gems. It's a must-do if you love colored gems. The Tucson "show" is actually about 40 or so separate shows, scattered around Tucson over a period of two weeks. Some require a business license, some are open to the public.

And no gem show trip is ever free of some sort of surprise, of course. This year there was a lot of rain - for the desert in winter, a LOT of rain - during the early days of the show. Which made most of the ground look like this:

Most of the time, shopping Tucson is dusty. Not this year! Lots of ankle-deep mud puddles to navigate. Fortunately I'd brought along a pair of workhorse boots, which sufficed until the mud dried up a bit.

My first stop was where I usually like to first shop: the Royston Turquoise booth. Oh, there are others (though not many), but this booth is special. :)  The boys always have many, many lovely gems, but they *do* sell out sometimes, so I like to get there as early as possible. This year I was unable to travel early enough to get to them when the show opened, so I got there late on the first day. And they were already (on the first day! They had two weeks left!) very low on larger sized gems, which I use for pendants.

I did find these:

Hello, fabulousness! I didn't get anything on the really large side, like last year, but I found a decent variety. The two matched pairs on the bottom are meant for earrings, but the pairs on the left I'm going to break up into pendants, and the pairs on the right I think I'm going to hold onto until I can find a really cool centerpiece to go with them. Sometimes gems just get put away for a while until the right time comes along.:)

While I didn't have a huge choice of pendants...I hit the jackpot with earrings this year:

Oh, what grand fun I will have making earings with these! I love finding unusual patterns and shapes in my gems, and these are all wonderful.

I'm taking photos and uploading them here all week, so stay tuned...there are a lot more lovelies to share. :)