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 Goodies, Part III: Peruvian Opals

Certain gems I just love in almost any incarnation. Peruvian opals fall into that category. I love them when they're a pure, sky blue, when they're slightly translucent with inclusions, and when they've got flashes of blue intermixed with brown "host rock" that makes them look like landscapes.

They're not an inexpensive stone - blue Peruvian opal is found in just one place: the Andes Mountains, in Peru. Like most relatively rare stones, it commands a relatively big price. And sometimes, as with most varied-color stones, you lose some of the patterns in smaller cuts. So this year I went a little bigger in my selections:

This is an example of a Peruvian with that great, sky-blue coloring. You can see bits of the host rock embedded within the blue color, but it certainly doesn't detract from such a beautiful cabochon. The length of this gem is about 1 3/4 inches - definitely a statement gem.

This is a great example of a more translucent opal. The soft hue combined with tan and a bit of black are lovely together.

These gems are some of my favorites - the "land and sea" stones. Great color, interesting detail, landscape-like variation.

And finally, the Mother of all opals:

It measures just under 2" long and is over 1/2" wide. I love the unusual cut and the landscape detail. It will be a bit more of a challenge to bezel (making larger bezels in general is harder than smaller bezels, plus it has two sharp corners which will be more difficult to set), but I'm very much looking forward to designing for this stone!