Gem Show Stash

The big Tucson Gem and Mineral Show is in progress here in town, and will continue until Feb. 11. I went today, with the idea of buying more turquoise, cause I love turquoise! And the folks that process the turquoise from the Kingman mine are always set up at the Holiday Inn.

I blew my entire budget at the first Gem Mall pavilion, didn't even make it up to the Inn. And didn't buy any turquoise! tsk

THIS is what I bought

(click on any photo to enlarge)


I manage to stop at 3 booths, and that was it, my money was gone!

The first booth I stopped at was Lanshang Co. at booth 1106. LOTS of nice gemstones! I ended up buying these lovely light blue faceted agate beads. I think they are going to make FABULOUS summer pieces, a necklace, bracelet, earrings. The large beads are about 18mm and are as big as plumper marbles! :-D I could make a real nice Wilma Flintstone necklace with those. LOL The smaller ones are 9mm.





Then I stopped at Multi Creations at booth 1107/1208. I love getting my Bali silver here, it's always really nice! They also have lots of Hill Tribe silver, but I'm always drawn to the Bali. This year, they're selling it for 99cents a gram, last year it was 69cents a gram. So you can see how much silver has gone up in the past year!!

This year, I got 2 strands of bead caps, which I don't usually buy but I have been wanting to do a few pieces with decorative bead caps. The larger caps are 12mm, the smaller are 6mm. I'm thinking these will help dress up some of the earrings I make.



From there, I knew I had enough money left for my turquoise, but figured I would continue poking around in the Gem Mall pavilion. And I stopped at Intrinsic Trading at booth 1219. *sigh* That's as far as I got. He has some gorgeous Red Creek Jasper that I started looking at. Beautiful 5 piece sets cut and drilled in beautiful patterns, with plenty of different sized strands of Red Creek Jasper rounds, flats, ovals. So at first I thought, I'll just get a couple of these 5 pc sets.



Then I had to get a few strands to go with them, because I didn't think I had anything at home to match.





And he also had some beautiful cut pieces drilled just right for beading, so I thought, well, get a few of those.



See how the holes are drilled? Perfect for a focus for a necklace!



And look at this one, I really love the colors and the design



So at this point I'm thinking, have a totally busted my turquoise budget?? Well, not completely, but certainly cut into it a bit! But, I kept looking. And found some gorgeous stuff called Ruby Zoisite! I couldn't help it, I said to heck with the turquoise! I need this stuff!!! Look at it!



The beads are beautifully faceted, and the focal pendant is lovely and smooth. With a bit of silver, I'm going to make a dynamite necklace and matching earrings!



This is what GemSelect.com says about Ruby Zoisite
"Ruby-Zoisite, also known as anyolite, is the natural combination of ruby and zoisite crystals in a single specimen. Zoisite, the same mineral as tanzanite, provides an earthy green and black color while ruby lends pink and red highlights. Ruby-zoisite is usually shaped as cabochons or carved into decorative shapes, including animals and religious icons.

Ruby-Zoisite was first discovered in 1954 in Tanzania. The name anyolite derives from the word for "green" in the native language of the Massai.

Ruby-Zoisite has a hardness of 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale, and is thus of moderate hardness."

So, you can see, it's a newer gemstone which doesn't have much history associated with it.

So, there went my budget for turquoise. All I could do at this point was to finish up what was left of my money right there. :)

A piece of carved Amazonite



An Ametrine pendant (Ametrine is Amethyst and Citrine together). I have plenty of both amethyst and citrine to make a necklace and matching earrings.



A carved Chrysocolla lizard pendant





And that's it! No turquoise!! :-D