Thursday, March 17, 2016

Gem Show Haul

Last weekend the JA/MJSA Show loaded in to the Javits Center in NYC. Many of my favorite vendors were there but I didn't have time to visit them all. It's so overwhelming and I didn't want top overbuy, but sometimes you just have to jump if you see something that may never appear again. Maybe I'll travel out to Edison, New Jersey next month for that extravaganza?


Here are some jewels that I purchased:

Faceted blood red garnets


Botroidal hematite


Blue kyanite


Chrysocolla



Larimar



Malachite


Fluorite


Calsillica


Red coral


Trilobytes


Blue topaz


Friday, March 11, 2016

Summer Is A Comin' In

It's been warm summer weather where I live, so I decided to re-introduce some non-wintry glass button dragonfly necklaces that I remade the other day. At one time I amassed a pretty colorful collection of these painted beauties and only have a couple left.

At one time I was doing a lot of filigree wrap. I filed the glass shank off the button backs and used some epoxy to hold them in place before folding the ends of the filigree over them, thereby assuring that they somehow won't shift or fall out - we don't want that! I changed the wire-wrapped freshwater pearl chains for simple gold-filled chain, for a cleaner look.