Tucson 2016

I'm back and (mostly!) recovered from the annual Tucson Gem Show visit. And it was wild and wooly like it is every year. Though this year was maybe a little less crazier than normal. ;)

I traveled later in the show's duration than I normally due, because of a conflict during the first week of the show. And I didn't like that one bit. I felt like I'd missed out on a lot of things that I was looking for; several of my regular gem sellers didn't have much - "much" being a relative term, of course - for my discerning eye. Next year I'll be back on the opening weekend to grab all the lovely goodies I can manage. ;)

But I didn't come home empty, by any means. I've already shared several photos of my finds on Instagram and on Facebook, but I've got some more / better shots now that I'm home, and here you get to really see some of the marvelous things I found:

"More druzy" was definitely on my list. I'd started working with some last year, and small pendants like the one below were well received. I didn't find any more of the blue druzy, but I did get a lot of silvery (titanium) druzy.

I bought some bigger sizes - probably the most often-asked question of 2015 was, "Do you have any BIGGER druzy?" - and I think some of these will work quite well in my specialty neckpieces, like this one:

I'm enjoying creating these larger statement necklaces and druzy is a great way to get some sparke into the designs without using faceted gems. :)

And then I bought some REALLY big druzies. These will be interesting to design with and more of a challenge to set, but they are really, really grand gems and I can't wait to play with them.

And then there were *these* druzies. Love the effect of the druzy intermixing with the host rock! The top one almost looks like a crystallized lava flow, and the bottom one reminds me of going caving and seeing the stalactites / stalagmintes below the earth. What fun!

But it wasn't *all* crystal-y goodness this year. In fact, you might say I went the opposite direction on some of my purchases. These are lodolite quartz, sometimes known as "garden quartz" because of the lush plant-like inclusions) and they are cut to be very "in depth" to bring out the colorful inclusions within the stone with an almost 3-D effect. I'm slowly building a small collection of these, and was pleased to find some stunners at the gem show:

And of course I did manage to buy some blue / green gems. I have so many of these in lovely, rich color patterns. My soul adores bold colors! So even though I was not "supposed to" buy any more...I found just a few that I couldn't resist.

This is one of those that just HAD to come home with me. Azurite chrysocolla. which up close, looks like the waters on a Capri vacation (not that I've ever been, but it looks like what I *imagine* it would be...the sea, the spa, the cliffs....which may be even better than the reality). :)

And of course some labradorite. I LOVE labradorite. And I HATE buying it. Because you have to hold each one up and see where and how it flashes. Some labradorite is great from a horizontal perspective (like if you're looking down onto a ring or bracelet) and some is great from a vertical perspective. So a stone that can look marvelous for a pendant, will look gray and dead if you try to put it in a ring. It takes me a long time to pick out labradorite. But then I am exceptionally happy once they've been selected and are at home with me. :) The color is off in this shot on the teardrop at bottom right because of the angle, but I promise it's going to make a great pendant!

I also bought a few - just a few - rougher, non-cabochon items. I want to incorporate more texture into my work with the gems, and while I love the smooth cabochons, sometimes a little variation is good. These are aquamarine nuggets. Aquamarine happens to be one of the gems I think has a lot more personality in a rough cut than all smooth and polished.

Also a little "rough around the edges" - a couple of amethyst stalactites. These are from actual stalactites that form on cave ceilings. They're lovely and unusual. I took home just two. :)

And now, it's time to get working in the studio again. I'm off to Miami next week for my second art festival of the year, so it'll be down to the wire to get more designs made before I leave. Hope you enjoyed the eye candy today though! I'll share some more as time permits. :)

Bigger...Bolder

Bigger...bolder. With the exception of the Sweet Somethings, that's been 2015's mantra. The necklaces below are two examples of my desire to really push my own envelope a bit and make some showpieces.

Crazy lace agate and a LOT of silver fabrication. :) This design was actually started late in 2014, just like the designs I shared here. But I just couldn't "get to" getting it finished, with everything else that was happening, so it sat for a few months. I finally made the arms and the set the stone, and I am so happy with the result.

And then this:

An amazing, and amazingly large, labradorite. I've been hoarding this gorgeous gem for a while and I guess it was just time for it to have a new home in metal. It's one of the more symmetrical designs I've made in a long time, and it is a stunning statement piece. It just GLOWS. :)

I can't wait for the chance to make more of these larger, challenging designs...right now I'm in the midst of prepping for fall events and haven't had much chance to spend the time (they are wonderful, but they take so much time!) on the statement pieces...but I have a few more to show from this summer's production. :) Stay tuned...

Ev-Uh-Loo-Shuh-N

Several months since I've shared here...several tumultuous, roller-coaster-of-emotions, crazy-train-riding months.

And I don't even want to discuss them...the details still hurt. I will tell you that there's been a big, and unexpected, betrayal of sorts (emotionally at least). Promises made and not kept. Professionally, my skills and abilities derided. A dismissal. Heartbreak.

It sounds so dramatic...and some of it has been. I try to live a very no-drama life, striving to enjoy the moments, both large and small, that life presents: sunshine stealing across the bed in the mornings, the absolute silence of the neighborhood and house in the middle of the night, the temperature dropping several degrees as fall approaches (or rising a good bit as summer arrives). A new pair of shoes for my birthday. Unexpected moments of bliss.

The disruption of the life I strive to create, the atmosphere in my home, the surroundings in which I design, has been difficult. Interestingly though, I think it has fostered a bit of growth, an evolution (or at least expansion) of what I'm creating. Which didn't happen all in the last few months, of course. Often it's only by looking back in the distance that we can see the changes more clearly.

In April 2013, I started with this:

A simple design, born of my desire for three things:

1. to allow the beautiful, colorful gems I love to be the focal point of my designs.

2. to practice my side-by-side soldering skills, which sorely needed work

3. to Keep It Simple, both a design and a life mantra for me

The pendants above sold immediately, as did several others in the same style.

It could have been the turquoises. I'm well aware that some of my customers buy these creations because of the gems. Which is totally fine - that's part of my own love, and what I enjoy buying and using in my designs. But since I started this collection, I've had comments and compliments on the metal work, too...which as you can see by the photos above, wasn't exactly complex. That doesn't mean it's easy, because it's not. But it wasn't crazy, bold, or grand.

What I wanted, originally, and what my skills could accommodate at the time, was gem-focused items with some metal detail. I didn't want to just have plain cabs with a bezel around them. I wanted more. This was my solution.

But always, while I am designing, I am thinking about, "What else? What's next? How would I...? and What if?" It's a striving, a curiosity that never ceases.

The next step in the evolution was to make the metalwork more complex:

From last fall. More joins, more wires to shape, more playing with asymmetry and balance...

and then to this summer:

Pure Heart Necklace  and Waterways Necklace

Adding more gems, still playing with balance (I'm always playing with balance. My love of asymmetry can get carried away if I let it). :)

and then, to this:

Dare to Imagine

Oh yeah. Taking a big ol' hunka hunka gem and embellishing all the way around it...and then adding embellishments as stand-alone design flourishes, to build a handmade chain. NOW we're talking.

Also, I think I may be moving out of the "keep it simple" realm. ~wry smile~  It's still a part of how I approach design, but sometimes it's apparently good to kick it up a notch. Or three. :)

I can't tell you how happy the above neckpiece(s) make me. It feels GOOD. And despite all the other turmoil that's been in my life, every day I can't wait to get to the studio and see what's going to happen next...I think next year is going to be an earth-shattering year...

Be well, all y'all. Enjoy the change(s) in seasons. Stretch, strive, be as drama-free as you possibly can. And when you can't, be good to yourself. Work on healing...work on happy.

- Jill 

Tucson Goodies, Part II: Labradorite and Larimar

I went to the Tucson Gem Show with a fairly limited list this year, and I didn't stray from it very much. I have been looking at getting back into wholesale, so I decided to buy (hopefully) enough stones for a small wholesale line as well as what I need for my retail designs. Thus I bought a bit more of my favorite stones and best sellers, but not as much of an assortment overall. I also bought lots of small gems for earrings, which are not nearly as exciting to photograph or view, so I'll spare you those. :)

First up, just a few of the labradorites I found:

a lovely round lab. Beautiful coloring and striations. I don't buy round shapes very often, but occasionally I stray from my love of asymmetry and play with something more balanced. This is about the size of a 50-cent piece and looks even better in person. :)

This is the biggest labradorite I purchased, with an amazing blue flash. It's at least double the size of my usual lab pendant gems and I can't wait to design around it!

Larimar, a perennial customer favorite, was much harder to come by this year. I saw a lot of what I consider bad quality larimar, for very spendy prices. And I really would rather not offer the stone for sale at all, than buy what I consider poor quality material...so I came home with very little. I did see some excellent larimar, but at prices that were way out of budget. The stone is found in only one location in the world, in the Dominican Rebublic, and it's definitely changed over the years - I don't know if it's getting played out, or the quality is changing, but the "good stuff" (in my opinion) is harder to come by and prices continue to rise.

I bought this rough slab - it's unpolished, so has a matte surface finish - and I'm thinking about prong-setting it. Prong setting is one of my goals for 2014, and I think this will lend itself nicely to that. It's also THICK:

a little over 1/4 inch thick. It's pretty substantial compared to most of the gems I buy. And in the side view above, you can see a lot of the natural brown inclusions - which I find in most of what I consider "lesser grade" larimar. I try to buy stones without much of the inclusions as I prefer the overall blue coloring. I don't mind if the inclusions are on the side, as in this slab, but usually I like my larimar clearer. A lot of what I'm seeing is very pale white with just a hint of blue, or a pale green combination, which I don't find nearly as attractive.

I also found this wonderful, splurge-worthy stone:

and couldn't leave it behind. It's better in person than in the photo, because you see the gradations of color more clearly in person. Why was it a splurge? The beautiful, consistent coloring over most of the stone (compare the color on this stone to the more striated-white areas on the slab in the first larimar photo), the rectangular cut, and the way it looks like ocean waves crashing toward the bottom. I'll have to design something really special for this gem. :)

And while I struggled with finding larimar, I did manage to purchase quite a few Peruvian opals and some great turquoise...I'll show them to you very soon!

Work Hard...Work Hard

I think somewhere along the way I've forgotten the "Play hard" part of that phrase. I have been working hard this week...but my energy is low and my body is fighting me. No surprise, really, after the hell-bent-for-leather show prep and then the load car / drive seven hours / unload car / set up booth / stand on asphalt for two fourteen-hour days / break down booth / load car / drive seven hours / unload car that was my schedule from Friday through Monday. I can't imagine why my body would be a little worn out!

And I was looking forward to a little break, but after coming home and looking at the inventory I have left, there's not enough to give to either of my galleries right now. And there's not a good cohesiveness to give to either one of my galleries right now. So, I am working as fast as I can to make new inventory and have it all ready by the November 14th and THEN maybe I can work at something less than hurricane pace. Although I have several custom orders to do to...for which I'm very grateful, no doubt about it, but WHERE is the downtime??

Here are the stones I'm making settings for this week:

From top to bottom: turquoise, larimar, kingman turquoise, larimar, peruvian opal (2 pairs)

And these:

From top to bottom: Royston turquoise, laguna lace agate, labradorite, larimar, labradorite x2, kingman turquiose, eudyialite, dendritic opal.

Whew!

The bezels are all made and I have to do the embellishments...which I'm about to get started on. I'm not feeling like it at the moment, but usually once I've gotten two pieces done I'll be in the groove. I don't think they'll all get done today but I'm hoping to have half today and half Monday, then I can clean up and set the gems...and hopefully by the end of the week I will have a decent amount of items to give to both galleries for the holiday season. THEN I can work on my next looming deadline...

What happened to Friday, you ask? I'm actually taking  a much-needed day off with my husband. Even the "work hard, work hard" girl needs a break once in a while.  :)

Fabrication Details

I have had some questions about how I make the embellished gemstone designs, and I thought I'd share a little more about that process. I've shown you the steps to making a rimless bezel setting, here, but now I'll show you what happens once the bezel and back plate are soldered together.

Mostly I sketch a rough idea first, though a select few of these pieces actually come together all at once at the work table. The rough idea may or may not end up being part (or no part) of the final piece. I am a bit of a "punter" with this kind of work; I use estimates and guesses and fiddle around until things look good to my eye. I hate to measure, so unless I'm making earrings I don't measure anything.  :)

I start out with the bezel on a piece of painter's tape, and then I add in the pre-shaped pieces until I have a design I like:

The design laid out the way I want it. Nothing is soldered in place yet, they're all just loosely resting on the tape. At this point I will often snap a photo with my cell phone so I can reference the placement of the embellishments if necessary.

Sorry for the blurry-ness of these quick snaps. But you get the gist, I hope. Anyhoo, the only thing different above is that I've marked up several areas with a Sharpie. Kind of hard to see but the blue spots (including the blue areas inside the bezel itself - mostly running down along the left side of the pendant (your left as you look at the photo) are guidelines for where I"ll place the solder. Otherwise once I remove the separate pieces I will have no clue where exactly the solder should go.

Wire embellishments have been soldered in place. If you look closely at the lower level "wing" on the right side of the photo, you'll see that some solder ended up on top of my texture. That will have to be removed in the cleanup process.

Balls are now also soldered in place. This is typically a pretty happy moment so I put in a smiley face. The only thing left is to solder the bail, and then I can move on to the clean up process.

I actually got excited about making this design and forgot to do a stone check once I'd soldered down the bezel, so I did it after the extras have been added. Fortunately it still fits! The dental floss is there to remove the stone, otherwise I'd have no easy way to get it back out and it's nowhere near ready to be set yet.

Bail's on! I cut a piece of tubing and soldered it on to the pendant. The chain will run through the bail and out the other side so the pendant slides freely.

Next is the cleanup process and then finally the stone can be set:

Voila! Now you know a little more about how the magic happens.  :)

Peering Through the Murky Darkness

I see a ray of light. Or hope. Or whatever it might be that makes me feel a bit better. I'll take it, whatever form it chooses.  :)

My last two shows have been very good to me - not huge moneymakers, but solid returns. And the customers have been excellent! Especially this past weekend in Nashville - a very similar reaction to the last time I was in Nashville. Warm and fuzzy, buying bigger ticket items, and very interested in the design work. It feels like a really grow-able market for me. With where I want the jewelry to go, I have to play a long game of sorts...not expecting huge dollars at every new show, but hopefully building a mailing list and loyal crowd of collectors. And Nashville feels like it could become part of that.

Finished it last week, sold it last week. It's hard to keep these in my inventory. 

In my last post, I mentioned that I sold 9 stone-set pieces at the Atlanta Arts festival. In Nashville, I sold 13 pieces. !!! (I had made 12 between the Atlanta and Nashville shows). I had no back stock to replace them with by the end of the show - whatever was on display was all I had. So guess who's going to be at it again, making a bunch of pieces to replace the sold items?? Yep. I have almost four weeks before I head to Memphis for my next festival. Hopefully it will be enough time to accomplish all that I want / need to...leaving, I also hope, some time to work on OTHER designs. I sold several of the mosaic pieces in Nashville (finally! a market that likes that series!) and need to make new ones not only to sell, but to send off to be photographed for jury shots.

So. I'm starting to see some things clicking into place. Patterns are emerging. I first introduced the newest line in April, and it sold regularly, from the very first show. So now I have to refine what I can, like having stones that really suit those designs, or having someone else help with cleanup or stone setting...to free up some of my own time to design, create, move the business forward.

And the mosaics...they didn't work out as well as I thought with casting the pieces. Sloooow movers. So maybe they're not meant to be cast. Maybe - light bulb - not everything I make is going to be cast and available to the masses. These, with their high labor factor, are more collector-type pieces. So far they've been rather niche-y; they don't appeal to everyone. Or they appeal...but not as much as some of my more mainstream work. So I'm going to treat them as they deserve to be treated. I've fabricated chains for the necklaces I made this year with the mosaics, and made bigger, more statement-y necklaces. I don't think I've quite hit my rhythm yet with these designs, but I'm working on 'em. I have a whole series of smaller, less labor-intensive designs to start working on whenever time permits, but they're never likely to be my bread-and-butters. And that's okay. I want to push outward and upward with my jewelry, and these will let me do that.

It's been several years since I've been comfortable with what I'm creating. And with what I'm displaying at festivals...the fabrication journey has been a hard one. I used to have this stuff figured out - but I think I'm moving toward having things figured out (as much as they ever can be) again. I can feel ideas flowing, designs coming together so that my creations look like a cohesive whole.And I just listened to a webinar yesterday that made me re-think a lot of things...got a lot of pondering to do while I'm working.

And this quote is now on the bulletin board:

"Follow your passion, do not settle, see beauty in the unexpected.
Oh, it will be difficult if you want to be the best, you'll have to deal with that as a constant."

- Todd Reed, jewelry designer  (want to see his web site? The work (and the overall aesthetic - for his designs and how he lives) is amazing! Click here
 

I'm Like a Greyhound

...okay, not exactly. I'm not that lean, and I don't have the big, soulful eyes. And I am (hopefully!) slightly less neurotic. But it seems like all I do is run, run, run...I get why those dogs are tired.

Brett and I arrived home late Monday (later than expected, due to equipment problems on the plane), only to find that the air conditioning was out AGAIN. I'll spare you the details, but it pretty much goes out several times every summer. Long story short, we got it fixed yesterday around 5 p.m. Guess who works from home? Guess who spent two full days with no air?? It was a little uncomfortable, to say the least. I like working with a HOT TORCH much better in the winter.  :)

But I did manage to get several pieces to the clean up stage this week, and I'm pretty happy about that. Of the big grouping I started two weeks ago, I have fully finished four (plus one designer piece), I have seven partially done, and eight more to go.

It's going a little slower now because I'm doing earrings. And for every sale-able pair, I need to double the work of  making one pendant. Less efficient, but so much fun when they are finished.  :)

The above quick-n-dirty bench photo is of two pendants and a pair of earrings. I LOVE how the pendant in the upper right corner came out! You can't quite see the top details, but it went together exactly how I'd imagined. Which doesn't happen as often as you'd expect (or as I'd like).

The middle two are going to be biiiiiiiig earrings. Those bezels are built for these babies:

Mmmm...hiya, big guys. I can't wait to get them set and cleaned up.  :)


Then there's these:

Two more pendants, one for a Kingman (upper right) turquoise, small oval with cute little streamer-like embellishments, and one for a Morenci (lower left) turquoise with a sort of Asian feel to the top embellishments. And the two pairs of earrings are both chrysocolla. They're fairly small stones, so I wanted to do something a little more exciting than what I used to do last year:

All I did for every pair of earrings last year was add a jump ring. Woo! I was a beginner...and just adding that friggin' ring at the top was hard.  I file a flat spot on my jump ring attachments, so that they join better (more surface contact means a stronger join) and it took me so long to be able to file straight / flat. I swear, sometimes I think I must be the MOST remedial of learners when it comes to jewelry fabrication. But I've done it so often now that I don't even have to think about it.  :)

So my earring designs are advancing...thank goodness. I feel very comfortable with pendants for the most part, but getting creative with earrings (and not adding too much weight with the sterling or making them too oversized to wear) has been a challenge.

Next up...rings. It's a whole other scenario, with shanks and all that, but I think it's almost time to start playing with gemstone rings. I've been waiting to get my skills competent enough but I think rings are moving to the top of my 1,587,652,213 things on my list of "design and create".   :)

The End Game

I've been at a lot of art festivals recently that seem like they're just not doing what I need them to do. Someone asked me this weekend if my reason for exhibiting at festivals was more exposure, or more money. I told him (this was a friend, not a customer) that my only reason for working festivals was to make money. Exposure helps, but NO ONE spends their time in an art festival booth for exposure. :)

Anyway, the show was slow. It's been a great show in the past, but in recent years it's started to feel like I should look for an alternative option, because the buying customers seem to be few and far between. BUT I am a girl who prefers to look on the bright side, and I like a silver lining. So I'll share some experiences that made me happy this weekend:

First, I sold the highest amount of stone-set pieces (seven) that I've ever sold at one festival. I keep track of these because it's still kind of amazing to me that people buy them...they're my favorite pieces to design and create, and every single one has called to its own special customer. Sometimes a sale feels very impersonal - someone sees something they like, and they say, "I'll take this." I box it up and they pay, and we're done. Nothing wrong with that. But the cabochon pieces...they wait for just the right owner.

One of my first sales on Saturday morning was to a couple of "regulars", meaning that they have purchased from me before. They're on the mailing list when I notify customers of events, and they come out and support. Not that every regular buys every time - and I totally understand that they can't - but they have made several purchases over the years and are always interested in what's new.

This couple bought a jasper pendant for their daughter:

and the wife had been looking at another pendant, but was hesitating. The husband bought it for her, saying, "She just announced her retirement last week" so this turned into her retirement present:

She was so happy and excited...now it will be a special piece that she'll always cherish. I LOVE it when that happens.

I also sold my to a young lady, about eight or nine years old, who used her own money to buy her first pair of "grown-up" earrings. Miss Kylie had been to my booth with her parents, and was looking at some turquoise earrings. She asked about the stone and guessed that it was turquoise, and we had a little guessing game with some of the other stones in my booth.  :)  Her mom said the turquoise earrings were too expensive at $70, and we moved over to my $25 earrings. She fell in love with a pair of tanzanite bead earrings, but they went away to do more shopping and "think about it". About an hour she and her parents were back, and she bought the earrings with her own money. Her mother tells me that she's not been allowed to wear dangle earrings before, but this would be her first pair and she could wear them on special occasions. She told me that they take Kylie to lots of art festivals because they want to expose her to all sorts of art and handmade creations. (Gotta love these folks!!). And it was the feel-good moment of the weekend. They even let me snap a photo:

It's hard to see, but Kylie's wearing her new earrings. With a BIG smile. And I hope this is the beginning of a girl who loves and collects jewelry all her life.  :)

And finally, an established metalsmith and SCAD graduate, whom I know slightly but hadn't seen in a while, came by my booth to chat. As we were talking, she stood back slightly from my display, sort of took in everything, and said, "Your work has really...evolved." And I can NOT tell you how good that felt! I've been working hard to learn and grow, and it's just nice sometimes to have independent verification that that is, in fact, what you have been doing.  :)

So that was the good news. And there's really no bad news...I'm just stressed because I haven't had a day off since May 15th. And tomorrow I'm driving to Michigan for another festival, the Royal Oak Clay, Glass, and Metal Show. It's a two day drive and I still have replacement jewelry to finish...the work never stops.

I DID manage to finish this though:

Oracle Necklace

All hand fabricated, chain, clasp, etc. My goal is to have three of these, what I consider my signature work, at each festival. I have one more piece I'm still (yes, at the 11th hour) working on, so I didn't quite make that goal at my last festival, but I had two, and a whole slew of the dot-and-line pieces.

Anyhoo, back to the cleanup and stone setting! If I'm lucky I'll be able to show you this week's pieces before I leave; if not they'll be posted once I'm home again.  :)

It Sneaks Up on You

I recently made a stone-set pendant, after not making any for almost three months (!!). It involved crafting two bezels, two back plates, soldering them together, soldering on three jump rings, cleanup, and stone setting. This seemed like a quite a bit of work  when I started it...

...but I worked steadily on it in the studio, and when I was getting ready to set the stones, I glanced at the clock. And thought, "Wow!" Apparently I've gotten a bit faster at this type of work! I was a little amazed. Especially after not making any stone-set pieces for a while. I've spent all year feeling like I'm so slooooow at this kind of work. Sometimes the learning curve sneaks up on you though.  :)

Stone setting, for me, has been a bit of the ne plus ultra of jewelry fabrication. For those of you wondering what the heck a "ne plus ultra" is, it's defined as:

1. The highest point, as of excellence or achievement; the ultimate.

2. The most profound degree, as of a condition or quality.

 

I felt like stone setting was THE mountain. Well...the most PROFOUND mountain. And from where I was standing, at the utter bottom, it seemed nearly insurmountable. Remember this post? I couldn't even make bezels at the beginning of this year. But I'll bet I've made over 100 of them by now. And yes...they've gotten much, much easier (and thus faster) for me. 

So I don't think I'm at the top of the mountain yet, but I've at least notched a couple of steps toward it. Now I'm starting to think about faceted stones (yes!!). But one thing at a time. I still want to make stone rings, bracelets, different types of necklaces and pendants....the list never ends.  :)

I'm also trying to figure out a way to be faster at stone setting, but I think that's just one of those things that really can't be rushed. (Or maybe I just haven't figured it out yet). Stone setting is nearly the last step of the process and it would be devastating to rush that and ruin the stone after putting in all the work on a one of a kind creation! 

So are you ready to see this happy new necklace?   

When I found this labradorite, I knew that it was going to be my next creation (despite the absolute slew of labs I bought at the same time). Something about it just spoke to me and I felt like I imagined this pendant, in its entirety, on the spot. That never happens. But I sat down to make it and it really felt like it came together so quickly!

The top back plate behind the garnet is softly textured with a satin finish, and the bottom plate has a light line texture, polished to a high shine. I'm loving the contrast. 

The back:

The top has an open back, so you can see the color of the garnet more clearly. The last garnet I set was gorgeous but without the light coming in it almost looked black against the metal backing. The customer who bought it loved it, but it bothered me. So I made a change for this one.  :)

Here's the previous garnet:

You can see the color in photos, but it was harder to tell what stone it was in real life. So the new one got a window in the back.

Not bad, eh? I'm pretty in love with it. Of course Blue Piranha loyalists know that garnet and lab is quite possibly my favorite stone combination. I've been using them together for years. 

But let me just say....wait until you see the *next* pendant I made...it's really, really good fun.  :)