Lots of pretty photos! And vacation.

I'm now on Christmas break! Though, I know for most people those days are probably far behind them, and "Christmas break" just brings back memories of airport rushing around and trying to find a way to get your mom to take you to the mall so you can buy her a gift without her knowing what it is. No airports for me, this year I'm staying in Boston with my boyfriend and his family, who are all amazingly nice. It's very exciting!
My boyfriend's brother has already 1) taught me how to solder (which I've been itching to try for a long time), 2) given me his old soldering iron (he has a new one) 3) given me some solder specifically for use with silver, which is what I'm going to DO, 4) given me a bunch of old, useless and incompatible-with-anything RAM sticks to cut up and use in jewelry...silver and gold accents on an intricately patterned deep green color. I'm so excited! Such possibility. Some of them even have holes already so I can string them if I want.

But I don't have a file to get the edges nice, or a saw to cut them up into smaller pieces, so I might have to wait before I can do what I'd like. I also don't have flux, which you usually need for jewelry soldering...Evan doesn't need it because he just uses it for electrical stuff, but jewelry is specialized in a different way. Maybe when I get going on it I'll post up a tutorial or something...which, knowing me, will be "How To Get Away With Soldering Jewelry Without Following Most of the Steps"


...AND IT'S NOT EVEN CHRISTMAS YET. Also he and Boyfriend of Mine have a bunch of old computer parts and they say they could help me make a good, fast desktop (something I do not have at all at the moment) for $100. A good deal. I'm surrounded by so many nice people!


So finally I'm posting up my awesome rocks. This is, apparently, standard procedure for jewelry-makers with blogs, but it's mostly because I want to, because I am so excited about them. Actually, I think that's WHY it's standard procedure - those people all get excited about the same things that I do.

First of all, I'd better link to these folks: rockcutter62 and terrafinds. They are the awesome people from which I ordered most of this stuff...both of them are awesome and I have no qualms advertising for them...Terra's stuff is more beautiful than her pictures (and she takes very good pictures) and she has sales often enough to make me want to buy all her stuff, all the time. She finds some of the prettiest labradorite I can find, on etsy or off, and sells it for less than almost everybody else sells theirs. And Ron (rockcutter62, of course) is an awesome retired man just cutting cabochons because he loves to do it, and selling them for beyond-reasonable prices. He even threw me in a free gift because he thought one of the cabs I bought was too "marginal"...a totally bizarre standard in my opinion, (the price I bought it for was $1.00!) but I'm not going to complain!

Here's some pretty rocks:

Itty-bitty lapis lazuli cab with pyrite inclusions...such an intense blue, I love it!









Okay, this one I bought because I'm a sentimental baby. My boyfriend's eyes look like blue lace agate, so I bought the least-expensive one I could find that still looked nice and usable (It's not even a cabachon, it's a pendant bead)...I intended it to be my first wire-wrapping experiments so I could be all sentimental and a baby, but I RAN OUT OF SILVER WIRE. More on that later.

This is a sweet little one. Owyhee jasper. I like it because the little blossoms on the side have a hint of pink to complement the brown. This was the one I got for free with the other (non-marginal) one that cost only $1.00. I probably wouldn't have bought it by itself, but now that I have it and can see it up close, I like it a lot.




And, uh, just...let me reiterate that.



Okay so the second picture isn't too clear, but at least it shows some of the color. I love this stone. Dark green, a color that really doesn't show up adequately on camera, shines like glass, has lots of depth...and like any good seraphinite, it looks like somebody squished an angel into it. I'm so happy about this stone. And it's BIG. BIG. (And Ron sold it to me for $5 because it was 50% off...when anyone else would have sold it for $20.) I'm such a big fan of this rock that I bought another one from him as soon as I got it:



AHHHHHHHHH. SO. PRETTY. I can't wait for my silver wire to come, because I am going to have a LOT OF FUN.


*breathe* Okay. Some even shinier things:

These are both from TerraFinds. Gorgeous high-quality garnets and labradorite...I had more of each, but I put them into Christmas presents, which I will post up AFTER my friends tell me they got them and oh man so shiny and well, I don't really like red but I'm sure it will go with something. The garnets look dark, dark red and shine lighter red on whatever they are near.
The labradorite is a smoky grey with shiny flecks in it, that at certain lights, does an impossible-looking color-change and becomes teal-green, or this brilliant shade of blue. The color-changing effect is so awesome and unique that it's named after the stone: labradorescence. Speaking of which.





BAM.

















Oh, uh, sorry, didn't catch that?

















I mean, enough said. You can see right into them. And like the other ones, they change in different lights. These ones are cabochons (no holes), so I need my silver wire (!) to wrap them...I can't just string them on wire and let them show off by themselves. But they are top-notch, really gorgeous. The other ones are awesome in their smoky-grey-ness, but these are crystal clear right up to the layers with the gorgeous colors. Breathtaking, really, for something so small.



AND here's where I post my first attempt at wire-wrapping. CAVEAT: It's not ultra-stable. I was so impatient to start wire-wrapping that I had to do it with the only large-gauge wire I had at the time (other than full-hard copper soldering wire) which happened to be gold-filled 20G dead-soft. Translation: it's really soft wire. I hammered it and everything, but it's still easy to take the stone out by bending the top back. Which I guess is okay, since you actually have to lift it out even if you take the top off...the bottom is secure. I wore it all day yesterday and it never showed any signs of not staying in. But it's not realy sell-able...though since it's my FIRST WRAP EVER I guess I wouldn't sell it anyway. BUT HEY. I didn't even make a total-failure-mess-of-things, as expected. My FIRST WRAP EVER and it's WEARABLE.



And pretty, too.












Now tell me, does that stone look "marginal" to you? Does it look worth $1.00? Because that is what I paid for it. It's not only the only one of these cabochons that really goes with gold wire, it's also REALLY. PRETTY. Blood poppy jasper. I would have paid more for it without the free gift thrown in. Seriously, give that guy some business.


So, I owe this blog a few more pictures...I'm going to post up the presents I made because I like what I did, but of course I can't post those until after their recipients see them. And I may not, depending on how much they like them.
Those should also go up under "recent creations" on my site, so don't let me forget.