Gemstones

Yay! Two new items up on Etsy:



and





Told you I'd get to work. I have a few more, and they'll go up throughout the next day or so, and I'll get around to posting them on here.

This post actually has something to talk about! Rather than just a list of pictures. Though the first two things are (surprise!) pictures. I wanted to comment on the gemstone rating system. Look at these two pictures.
























































These are both of kyanite. One is shimmery (chatoyant, for the elitist) and one is transparent. Well, they're both shimmery. But one has, you know...stuff in it. Sadly, I don't have these...I just got the pictures from Etsy.
Gemstones are graded by "quality" - basically the appearance in terms of clarity, color, presence of inclusions and imperfections, etc. The clear Kyanite, for instance is grade AA...and if it were slightly clear-ER, it would be AAA. In general, the clearer a gemstone is, the higher-grade it is. And vice-versa. Of course, both kinds of kyanite up there are absolutely GORGEOUS. But I am of the opinion that often, a clearer gemstone is much less interesting, and therefore much less desirable. I was never a fan of diamonds...I told my boyfriend, if we ever get married, don't get me any diamonds...I mean, they aren't even a COLOR. They might as well be at least SLIGHTLY interesting as well as sparkly and expensive.

For instance, okay, it isn't true of labradorite that the high-quality ones are boring. Labradorite at all different qualities has different mystiques, and I like it when it's flecked and grey only slightly less than when it's clear as water up to its shining layers. But if it were entirely transparent, instead of just transparent to the point of showing awesome color, it would be utterly boring. While this is not true of the clear kyanite in the picture, for instance, most high-quality garnets look like red glass, and are almost indistinguishable from it at first glance.


This is what low-quality, bad garnet looks like. Bad picture, I know...out of focus, but you can still see the glimmeriness. I bought this at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (which reminds me...) meaning to cage it somehow. I just really liked the shine that flashes from deep inside it. By contrast, high-quality garnets are completely clear...I mean, they're definitely PRETTY...And it's good to know that that color is made by nature and not a measured mix of chemicals...But if you search Etsy for garnets you'll come up with a lot of similar-looking things, and many of them will be glass that people just put "garnet" in the name because that is the proprietary name of the color. That and quartz - clear quartz is dyed so many colors that you even can find "emerald quartz" - emerald is a PRECIOUS stone, definitely not a quartz, but it can look like it, and trap blissfully unaware amateur gemstone buyers. One exception, though, is rutilated quartz - that's clear quartz with neat inclusions, mostly strands of gold-colored I-don't-know-what. That is rightly valued for (of course) how clear it is, but also how neat the inclusions are. That's more my kind of thing.

I don't mind using gemstones that don't have inclusions, if they're pretty, but the others seem so much more worthwhile. Basically, I've decided that I would much rather work with labradorescent stones and chatoyant stones...the ones that have STUFF in them that looks cool. Labradorite, seraphinite, kyanite, pietersite, tiger-eye. Low-quality of most things, like garnet. And of course, the ones like jasper, that aren't really gems but cool rocks...things are much more interesting when you can't get glass that looks just like it. No diamonds for me. SO BORING. Anyway, that's thoughts.






Also, here's a picture of the one that I just out-of-the-blue sold in person:



This one was the first I did with the stones in the previous post. I'm pretty happy with it...I was worried because the stone is so thick, and I didn't know if I could make it secure. I'm proud of the tiny and intricate work I did there, and all the extra flourishes just add to its stability. Of course, that's at the expense of hiding the stone a bit, but the people who said they would buy it from me didn't seem to mind.

Posting that garnet reminded me of some more pictures I owe this blog. This summer I went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in D.C. for a day. I went to the gem gift shop and walked around, and of course bought some excellent fossils (and that garnet). I have some awesome ammonite to make stuff out of, and I've been meaning to post pictures ever since I got this blog. I keep forgetting. Maybe this will make me remember.