Bigger...Bolder, Round 2

2015 has been the year of custom orders. I've always done them, but this year they've really been coming regularly, one on top of the next. I currently have a list of eight custom orders, in various stages of progress (some are, so far, just a list on the whiteboard).

These more recent "bigger, bolder" designs were made for a lovely collector who likes BIG gems. Not that *I* mind. :)

This HUGE Royston cabochon had been sitting in my stash for about a year. I was a little hesitant when I bought it, but I was looking for larger gems, and it was too wonderful to leave behind. The blue is stellar, the patterning is excellent, and it's got that organic-y shape I love. So I took it home with me.

And then my collector saw it, and she certainly didn't hesitate. So I started working on it. I love how the embellishments feel very much in tune with the patterning of the stone.

Here's the entirety:

A whole lot of gorgeousness. I gave it to the customer last month, and she was thrilled. She was beyond thrilled. She always says, "My jewelry pieces are my babies" and this might just be her newest favorite. :)

But wait...there's a bonus. This same customer had purchased an AMAZING boulder opal, years ago, and she wanted that set as well. Soooo......

This fabulous gem had so much play of color going on that I didn't want to get too carried away with the embellishments. So it's a little less WOW but still glorious. It's so reflective that it was hard to capture the colors, but here are a couple more photos:

Also, I played with the clasp on this, making a symmetrical clasp / embellishment design. You can see it in the first photo - the "hook" connector on the right side of the photo is soldered shut and permanently attached. So when the customer attaches the other hook, the pendant hangs perfectly in between them. It means that the necklace isn't adjustable, but I know her very well and knew what length to make the chain so it would lay where she wants it to.

And, I have two more wonderful gems to set for this lady. They have bezels and back plates, but no embellishments yet...hoepfully soon...

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 V: Koroit Opal

For 2014, I have several goals, designed to stretch both my metalworking skills and my gem-buying choices. It's no secret that I love the rare, the unusual, the sometimes fantastical gemstones...but often the rare, unusual, and fantastical is out of budget. In the past, I've compromised by buying smaller gems, more organically-shaped cuts (less skilled cutters often cut the gems into organic shapes, rather than perfectly balanced shapes and sharp corners, which are harder to do well, and thus cost more), and simply choosing not to purchase the gems that seemed completely out of reach.

I do choose what I consider to be the best of the gems that I can afford, considering size, shape, and quality. My loyal customers know that when you buy jewelry from me, the gems are the very best I can find. I've also been working nonstop on honing my metal skills so that I could do those gems justice..and now I want to stretch the type of gems I offer as well.

With this in mind, one of my splurge-y purchases this year was four (yes, just four) Koroit opals.

I wish I could get a better shot of these, so you could really see the color play of the opal. But these take a very high polish and that causes them to reflect the lighting terribly, so I get a lot of glare on my photos. But they're beautifully lit from with in with opal veining. **I did make a video of these beauties; unfortunately I am not tech savvy enough (yet) to upload it here. But it's posted in Instagram (I'm bluepiranha) and on Facebook.  :)

The stone above has a bit of opal veining at the top and more at the bottom. Koroit opal is a form of boulder opal, which, just like boulder turquoise, means that the opal is not completely cut out of the host stone. The interesting thing about Koroit opals ( from the Southwestern part of Queensland, Australia) is that the host rock (and thus the opal contained within) ends up forming these wonderfully wild and whimsical curly, curvy patterning. I bought these directly from the man who mines them, and he told me that Koroit is the only place where that kind of geological patterning takes place for opals, and no one knows why.

You can see a bit more of the color play throughout this stone. And trust me when I tell you that while these were a bit of a stretch for my budget, they were the miner's least expensive gems. Most were not stretch-able for me at this time, but I did spend a bit of time looking at his other offerings. They are like freakin' candy.

Here's a great example of an even more fabulous - and much pricier - Koroit opal:

source

See how much more color play, both throughout the stone, and in the opal striations, it has? And it's much more precisely cut than the organically shaped gems that I purchased.

I'm not ready for that yet...but a girl's got to start somewhere. And these opals are just one of many stepping stones (no pun intended) on my way to bigger, bolder, better. :)