Modern – Emerald Traditional – Emerald Mystical - Sapphire Emerald is considered one of the four traditional precious gemstones along with Ruby, Diamond and Sapphire. It is a bluish green member of the Beryl family of minerals along with Aquamarine. Beryl is a mineral found in igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. If a Green Beryl stone is too light in color and less saturated to be called Emerald it is usually named Green Beryl. Aquamarine often has a greenish cast to the stone but is heated to bring out more of the blue color and reduce the green. In that way, Aquamarine and Emerald are closely related, but Emerald has chromium or vanadium in it which gives it the rich...
Modern – Diamond Traditional – Bloodstone Mystical - Opal Diamonds are nothing more than highly organized carbon, yet through history, diamonds have been held in the highest regard and value. They are formed under high temperature and pressure conditions that exist only about 100 miles beneath the earth’s surface and come in a variety of colors - gray, white, blue, yellow, orange, red, green, pink to purple, brown, and black. I'm in love with the cognac/champagne colored diamond in this Chinchar/Maloney Aira ring. Love them or hate them, they have been created to endure! Many famous quotes use them as a way of showing high value in all things good: Better a diamond with a flaw then a pebble without. -Confucious There are three things extremely...
I had some time this week to play with another one of the items that my share partner, Carla sent me. The enameled pendant that she made was calling my name. I wanted to pick up the colors in the pendant with gemstones and knew that Carnelian would be a nice match to the red. The yellow had me stumped though. I didn't really have anything that coordinated well. There were some natural colored peridot sitting on my work space that caught my eye. Serendipity! The green had just enough yellow in it to play up the yellow but they were not too matchy, matchy. I oxidized some silver wire, chain and a clasp to go with the black metal...
From the beginning, I knew I wanted to make a long wire wrapped necklace using the vintage crackle glass beads and the striped 1980s furnace glass beads. I looked at the colors in the striped glass beads as inspiration for what else to use in the necklace - black, blue, orange, light rose and yellow. Adding black seemed too harsh, light rose just seemed to not belong and I'm not a big fan of yellow. I decided to use some blue and its complement orange to add more color to the piece. I am madly in love with cobalt blue glass and had some long vintage tube beads in my hoarded stash (not knowing what to do with them yet)...
I'm participating in a something known as a BSBP. What is a Bead Soup Blog Party? It's a gift exchange of sorts, but with beads and then the added excitement of a show of the finished designs made with those beads. Laurie Anderson, the organizer, is an online friend of mine who I have known for so long now I can't remember what year we first "met" but it has to have been at least 10 years ago. She has a similar obsession with beads of all sorts as I do - in fact so does every participant in the BSBP, a huge number of her online friends who like us, have a big stash of beads (our Bead...
