Tucson 2017 - Turquoise (other)

Though my big love is the Royston / ribbon turquoise, there are certainly plenty of marvelous turquoises available on the gem market. This year, I stumbled on to some lovely examples of some of these "other" turquoises.

This year I found some Number 8 turquoise. The Number 8 mine, in Nevada, is one of the best known American turquoise mines. Its turquoise has long been prized for its spiderweb-y patterning (best seen in the top stone in the photo below).

Number 8 has been depleted of turquoise since the 1960s or 1970s, depending on which source(s) you believe. Either way, the only Number 8 turquoise on the market today seems to be from decreasing stores of the old rough that has been hoarded for many years. Sometimes, the owner of the rough sells it to pay the bills, sometimes old hoarders die and the family sells their stock...but whatever the circumstances, Number 8 is hard to come by and because demand is high and supply low, it's not inexpensive. I am thrilled to have added a few pieces of it to my own stash.

The other turquoise find from this year's trip is Campitos turquoise. Campitos is Mexican turquoise, mined since the 1980s in Sonora. It's sometimes compared to Sleeping Beauty because it will have bits of that soaring, pure-blue-sky color that defines Sleeping Beauty (known for its beautiful blue hue and almost no matrix in the stone).

Here's an example of Sleeping Beauty:

This a necklace made of Sleeping Beauty nuggets that I bought in the 1990s (for a song, compared to what I'd pay today, if I could even get my hands on any). I held on to the strand of nuggets for about ten years and then finally made them into a necklace. That mine is closed (as of 2012) and there's a limited supply of Sleeping Beauty on the market today.

But I digress. Back to the Campitos:

Lovely organically shaped cabochons with a lot of bold contrasts! These are so beautiful, with that lovely teal color just bursting against the brown host rock. I am eager to play with these!

Tucson 2017 - Turquoise (Royston)

A trip to the Tucson show would not be complete without sharing some turquoise finds. One of my favorite gemstones, turquoise is found around the world and has a range of color and patterning that boggles the mind. A good amount of high quality turquoise is found in the American Southwest: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.

One of the turquoises I love to buy is Royston / Ribbon turquoise, so named because it can look like "ribbons" of turquoise are winding through the host rock, forming interesting patterns. This turquoise comes from Nevada, and is often used in Native American jewelry designs.

My finds from this year:

Not a lot. And I don't have much on hand already, so my stash is on the small side. But when I shop the millions of gems on display in Tucson, one of my challenges is to find what I consider the absolute very *best* options. Some years, there's a lot available of what I deem "the best". And some years...there isn't. Natural gems are not an ever-renewing resource, so I pick and choose from whatever's available at any given moment. I'm quite satisfied with these beauties though; each one has splendid patterning and contrast.

And I did manage to find a few earring pairs:

Just a few. But all stellar. :)

And then these:

I've written about these gems before, here, and here, if you'd like to see more examples of this gorgeous gem. :)

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...

Where to Go from Here?

I haven't been regularly keeping up with the blog...some of you would say, "Well, when *were* you, Jill?" ~wry smile~ I never seemed to have enough time for it. And now, suddenly, it seems a somewhat old and clunky format to share with you, friends and followers. I've been much more active on Facebook and Instagram than I have here, posting photos of new designs (almost) as soon as they're created.

And I've struggled with keeping up with making new designs - not for lack of designs, but for lack of time...same old, same old. Only so much two hands can do....which doesn't leave a lot of time for writing (hopefully) interesting blog content.

While I don't want to shut down the blog entirely, I think it's going to be much more photo-focused with less text. This may end up redundant for those of you who follow me on Instagram or Facebook, and if so, I apologize. But there's just never enough time...and my main love is the making, not writing about, the jewelry. :)

So, without further ado, let me share the Sweet Somethings creations:

These came about because while I've been pushing myself to design bigger and bolder, I also wanted something on the other side of the spectrum. Something sweet, and wearable for everyday, if so desired. Something smaller than my usual designs, that would layer with other necklaces...like little dollops of sweetness around the neck. :)

They've actually turned out to be quite fun to design and make, because they come together much more quickly than the big statement pieces. I can make up a batch and feel like I've gotten a lot done, instead of taking days at a time for the larger  and more complex designs. And they still hold true to my design aesthetic of balanced asymmetry. 

From top to bottom: chrysocolla, druzy, larimar, peruvian opal, shattuckite, turquoise, druzy. 

They are available here: blue piranha web site and here: blue piranha on Etsy

A Little Jewelry Education

When I'm exhibiing my jewelry at festivals, I tend to get a lot of questions about how the jewelry is made. So though I usually don't share Works In Progress, I snapped some quick iPhone photos while I was working on one of  my most recent designs.

Essentially, what I do is take raw metal materials - sheet, wire, and tubing - and "fabricate" them into jewelry:

Sheet:

source

Wire:

It comes in square shape already, but I hammer in every line of that texture.

Tubing:

source

The tubing, as you can see, comes in various diameters. I buy 12" tubes and then hand-cut the smaller tube sizes I need from that. 

So that's the raw materials. But how do they become a finished piece of jewelry? 

For me, since I design primarly with gems, the sort of "prequel" to beginning to make a piece of jewelry is pulling stones from my stash, comparing colors and shapes until I'm happy with what's in my hands.

After choosing gems, what happens first is a sketch. Well...sometimes. My sketches are mostly rough ideas to build upon, not detailed jewelry renderings. I've found that I'm more comfortable working in the metal itself, rather than making a sketch and transferring that idea to metal. But for more complex designs, like the one I'm using to illustrate today's post, sketching does help to gauge "what's going to go where", and "Do I really want a 3 inch doodad which might not be structurally sound, or would it work better at 1.5 inches?". It's helpful to answer these questions sooner, rather than later. :)

Once (if) the sketching is done, it's time to make bezels and back plates for the gems. I can't solder anything together until the gems have their metal homes first. I detailed the process of bezeling and back plate-ing here if you want to read more about that. Once that part is done, I start shaping and refining the embellisments.*

*Anything that's additional to the basic metal fabrication is commonly called embellishments. I could simply set the gems in a bezel and add a bail, and that would be an un-embellished pendant. Most metalsmiths, however, like to play. So we add all manner of layers and doodads and geegaws and granules...those are the embellishments.  :)

In the above photo, there are no backs to the bezels around the gems, and the embellishments have not been soldered in place. This is the beginning of desiging. I cut and shape the wire embellishements and start laying them out on the tape until they look right. 

I shape freehand, working along a somewhat meandering path to what appeals to my eye. I like what I call balanced asymmetry. For this design, that means that the two triangular bezels in the upper corners of the necklace are close, but not quite the same distance from the center bezel, and that the triangles are not both facing the same direction (one is point up; the other, point down). 

Now the wires are soldered, and two of the hinges are done. The necklace is taped to a neckform for me to check how it will lay on the body. 

Above (in this terribly blurry phone shot) are the small tubes I have cut from the 12" length to make the hinge joins. And the jump rings (which I also make by hand): 

that join the hinges together, as seen below:

In the above photo, you can see one of the "arms" of the handmade chain on this design. 

These are some of the arms. They're soldered together, and the tiny tubing is attached, but they're not added to the body of the design yet. But they're going to go up the neck, on the sides of the centerpiece, and lead to some additional handmade chain in the back. 

And *that* extra chain is all hand fabbed too. I take a slightly thinner wire and make ovals out of it, by first coiling it on a mandrel. With round wire you can just coil to your heart's content, but square wire can very easily get "off the square" and twist where you don't want it to. So it's a little slower process to carefully coil square wire:

Then the rings get sawn off, one by one, I've sawn a bunch loose already:

Loose rings sawn from the coil:

Next the open ends will be soldered, and then they'll be textured:

The one on the left has been textured; the ones on the right are soldered but not yet textured.

They then get soldered together, with another jump ring, to form this:

at the back of the necklace. 

Here's a process shot of those loose arms, all soldered together and getting their tiny ball embellishments:

Painter's tape, as you can see, is an invaluable tool in the jewelry studio. I use it constantly to temporarly keep things in place before they're physically joined. 

And now the whole neckpiece is done. Well... done with the fabrication and soldering, that is. Which doesn't mean that it's *finished*. There's a whole lot of clean up to do, which will remove any excess solder that went where I didn't want it to go, and then several steps of polishing the metal to get that soul-satisfying, deep shine. And then the gems need to be set. Probably at least a day's work (if not more) still...so no full-on shots yet...but I promise to show you once it's ready for viewing. :) 

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 

Time Flies...on a Private, Supersonic Jet

I look at the date of my last post, May 20th, and realize today is June 18th. Nearly a month has passed. In some ways, only a month. And yet...in some ways, my last post feels like it was written last year.

For days, days, days on end, my schedule has been to get up, eat breakfast, work.....fourteen hour days (or more). And then go to bed, get up, and do it all again. There have been a couple of weekend days where I didn't work - I really try not to, when I'm not at a festival - but overall it's been exhausting. I headed to Michigan (a ten hour drive) last Thursday, not exactly feeling on top of my game.

And surprise, surprise...I'm NOT on top of my game. I went to the doctor today and got diagnosed with a UTI (bladder infection). Sorry if that's TMI for ya, but it iz what it iz. Far as I can tell, it started Thursday when I left...but there was nothing I could do since I knew I wouldn't be able to see the doctor until today. So I'm a little more run down and tired than normal.

And yet. I feel like I can't rest because there's so much buzzing around in my head. Now I'm going to have some time (my next festival isn't until September) to try to put in place the things I've been trying to put in place for a long time. I've got a list. I've got motivation. I've got...to start working it ASAP, because there is truly no time like the present...and I'm already behind. ~wry smile~ Does *every* small business owner feel this way rather often?

So let me distract myself a bit - because I can't do anything about it tonight - and tell you about Michigan. :)

First, the show is a long way away. And because my husband came with me, we added an extra day as he visited a client on Monday. So it was five hotels in six nights. By the time we were in the fourth hotel, I could barely remember what floor we were on or what our room number was. A lot of shuffling and moving things around.

It's not a big show. It doesn't have a ton of foot traffic - at least, not what I'm used to in some of the bigger festivals in, say, Arizona, or even in Georgia. But sometimes a smaller show can truly be a gem (no pun intended). I exhibited at this festival for the first time last year, and it was, if not exactly solid...well, it seemed to have potential. So I came back this year, a little (only a little!) better prepped with inventory, a little more familiar with the town, a little lighter on my feet because I had help from my husband. Those of you who have never done a festival, from setup to tear down, don't understand how much help it is to have someone with you, to share the load. Especially someone who knows *your* business pretty well. And to help with the (literally) heavy liftting. It made things much easier in some ways.

And the people...oh, you lovely people! The thing I really like about Michiganders is that they're direct. They're not brusque, but they're blunt and to the point, just the way I like my conversation. :)  Nice people who don't bother with any of the "bless your heart"-ish talk that you sometimes hear in the South. They'll tell you how they feel. People recommended other festivals, they were fascinated and interested that we were up "all the way" from Atlanta, and this crowd LOVES gems as much as I do. I sold several special designs that I wasn't quite ready to part with, but I know they went to good homes and will be well loved. I've never seen a group of people so interested in the details about my gems. What fun to talk to a fairly jewelry-educated crowd!

This was the first piece sold on Saturday morning. Brand spankin' new...she loved it and wore it out of the booth. :)

The weather was a *little* warm...but honestly about as perfect as it could be.

So we left town in very good spirits; I've got my list of to-do's to put in place, and all the show crapola is stored away for a little while. I'm looking forward to some long (but not fourteen hour!) days in the studio to build, to push, to stretch my dreams and make them into some fabulous jewelry. "Watch this space", as they used to say, to see what happens next...

Summer's officially here in three days. Let's make it a really, really good one. :)

Breathe. Breathe...BREATHE!!

The last "breathe" is more like, "Breathe, dammit!" which sort of ruins the ohm-ness of the mantra. Breathing (and meditating, and being all Zen) is NOT part of the routine lately. I'm leaving tomorrow for a big drive to Indianapolis, for the Broad Ripple Art Fair. It's a two day show but I'll be gone for five (drive day, setup day, show days, drive day) and then just a few days later I'll be at the Decatur Arts Festival here in Georgia. Not a lot of downtime lurking in my near future...

HOWEVER. And yes, that's in all caps because I'm quite pleased that today, the day before I leave for my next festival, I am making *no* jewelry whatsoever. Oh, I'm photographing, writing listings, posting new items on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest as fast as I can...but I'm not making. And that in itself is a huge accomplishment. Especially when - in the midst of building up inventory of my current designs, I took a two-day window to work on some new designs:

Like these turquoises...

You may want to sit back now (or alternatively *come* back, as I'm going to tell a story...) because here's how the magic sometimes works:

I had these circles. From...2008-ish? Anyway. I was learning fabrication. And I'd made a bunch of these circles, in various sizes. And I - God knows why - decided I wanted to cast them. Well, I do know why. Making these circles was HARD. (now is the point at which the seasoned metall-ers will bust a gut laughing, because making circles is pretty much one of the EASIEST things to do). But I was a remedial fabricator, and it wasn't easy then. So I had them cast. And I used them in a bunch of designs. I oxidized them, hung them on leather, added beads to them, soldered some of them together...you name it, I did it with these. And they sold moderately well....but I had a fair amount left over from the caster once I'd moved on with newer designs.

So they have sat around the studio for a while, and last week I got a wild hair and fabricated gem settings for them. I'd been thinking about doing *something*with them for some time, but the what was eluding me. I'd ALSO bought all these organic, funky-shaped cabs...(also a while ago) which I wasn't using, because I tend to like more symmetrically cut gems. So I started pulling out cabs from my stash, but the symmetrical cuts didn't look right with these circles...but oh, the funky ones DID. I laid out about twenty pieces and started making the back plates and bezels. Then I realized that I wouldn't get twenty done - and still get all the other work done I needed to before heading to Indy - and I stopped at ten. Just enough to make a nice showing in the festival booth.

Peruvian opals.

I wanted to keep these designs simple and very modern, using asymmetry and negative space for impact, heightening the contrast of the gems' smooth texture against the rustic circles. They came together quickly and were great fun to work on, almost like a breath (see what I did there) of fresh air. I've been trying for so long to learn to do more, and more, and more, make the jewelry more complex, more difficult to make...and these were just easy to play with. Sometimes you don't even know that you have what you need, but when you find it, and you put it all together...magic.

Now, of course, I want to make more...and I'm starting to feel like my whole creative mojo (which was kind of dormant for most of this spring) is coming back in a BIG way. Yahoooo!

But first...back to pricing, uploading, and packing up the jewelry. And packing up the truck for the drive. And packing up me and all my show needs....and maybe having a moment to BREATHE. I guess that's what I'll be doing on the eight hour drive tomorrow.  :)

Tucson Gem Show, Part IV: The Turquoise!

I learned my lesson last year, having randomly stumbled across one small booth selling beautiful examples of Royston turquoise. I bought a few, and sold all but one (thank you, my awesome customers!!). The response to them was phenomenal, which means that I get to buy more!

This year, I went straight to that same booth when the show opened, and I literally fought my way through the crowds to get some of these goodies. The booth was packed with other people who wanted the same thing I did, and getting your toes stepped on or your side elbowed is sometimes part of the gem buying experience. But trust me when I say it was totally worth it. :)

For those who don't know, Royston turquoise comes from Nevada. It's a lovely and prized type of turquoise with stunning color and matrix. But the type of Royston turquoise I REALLY love is known as boulder, or ribbon turquoise. The turquoise gem is not completely cut out of the host rock, or boulder (hence, boulder turquoise), and the lovely blue color winds through the boulder, often resembling a ribbon. Like these:

they give a flash of the blue, contained within a lovely golden brown host rock (sometimes the host rock is a bit paler, as in the center earring pair shown above). Unusual, lovely, and yes...a bit spendy. But sooo worth it. 

These are all earring pairs. I didn't have as much luck finding pendant gemstones this year, but I did stock up on earring stones as much as I could. That doesn't mean that I have a lot, because these aren't easy to find - I only saw Royston / boulder turquoise at two gem vendors this year - but I grabbed what I could.

Of course, I didn't forgo pendant-sized gems entirely:

These all have the lighter host rock, but will still make lovely pendants. The upside-down teardrop shape is one of my favorites to work with.

I also found these three ovals, and....

this bad boy. It's BIG. And beautiful. And it's going to make a stunning pendant. :) 

But let me share my OTHER great find:

Natural Kingman turquoise, from Arizona. One of my favorites of the American turquoises. The Kimgman mine is still in operation, but only for copper mining; turquoise is no longer mined there. So any Kingman gems that come on the market are from old stock, in limited amounts. They're also often not in my budget. But this year, the stars aligned and I found a few that I had to bring home. Just look at those two beauties! The coloring and matrix remind me of some of the prettiest Peruvian opals that I've shared with you....only these are even better in some ways. :) 

And for the first time ever, I found earring pairs!

Just a sampling of the 12 pairs I found. All different, all stunning. And all American.  :)

I have one more unusual gem to share with you. And then it's time to get on to turning these gorgeous goodies into jewelry!