DVHdesigns, Custom Cut Gemstone Beads.

New Genuine Jet Lapidary Work, Beads & Cabs

2012-01-06T17:14:00.000-08:00

Howdy all and Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to be more engaged with the beading, jewelry, and lapidary forums that I'm involved in! For 2012 I'm working on being back in black, and that means doing more and more work in genuine jet. I'm the January speaker for the Bead Society of San Diego County and will be giving my lecture on the History of Jet and Jet Mourning Jewelry at the Mingei International Museum, so I'm trying to get as much new work in jet done as possible!

I lost my lease at the studio I'd been in for 3 years and had to move out the end of November. I spent much of December getting everything set up and organized in my new space (which is actually a much better space!) and am now finally getting back to work. So glad the holidays are over!

Here's a group shot of my newest work in jet. This is all made with jet from Tennessee and I really like to use the "natural" surface of the rough when possible. Jet is a form of gem grade lignite coal and most people have never even touched real coal (let alone gem grade coal!). It's very lightweight, like amber, and it's only a little bit harder than amber, but substantially tougher. Metaphysically, jet is said to help with depression, relieve grief, help one to accept things just they way they are, and support financial stability! Most jet is fossilized Monkey Puzzle tree and is around 60 MILLION years old! A true fossil fuel jewel!

and here is the polished side of the beads...

and here's some close ups...

and I think this cab will be fun for a jeweler or beader to do some creative work with...

I'll share some pics of the "all smooth and polished" pieces I'm doing with jet from Russia later. FYI, I'm also having a New Year's 20% off sale with free shipping in my DVHdesigns eBay store!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Regards,

David

93 carat Australian Jelly Opal 2 hole bead!

2011-11-26T22:02:00.000-08:00

Opals aren't so much "difficult" to cut and polish, as much as they are "challenging". They're a softer gem and they cut easily and take a nice polish, but they are temperature and pressure sensitive. One has to really study the color and patterns before and while cutting them. In some opals the layer of fire or flash can be paper thin and if you grind or sand just a little too much, one can lose the color. Still, I find them really fun and rewarding to cut and have always found cutting them to be a pleasure, but of course I want great material to cut, and that's where the problem, and the expense comes in!

Here's the latest from the Australian jelly opal rough and this is the LAST of the large ones. There will be two small ones after this (assuming they make it through the final sandings and polish without incident, knock wood!). So this beautiful, one of a kind, gemstone jelly opal bead has a weight of 93cts and the entire piece measures 81x17mm by 10mm thick. There are TWO, parallel, 1.5mm drill holes through the bead so it could be strung with a double strand (or more) of pearls or some other beautiful beads! Lovely high polished long oval shape. The material is translucent to transparent jelly opal with a lovely bluish purple glowing flashing that runs through it like a flowing river. There is also a lovely rivulet of minty green fire which has both flashes and sparkles. Occassional small flashes of other colors as well.

There are a lot more images of this gemstone bead in the listing in my DVHdesigns eBay store. Thanks for letting me share more of my work and I hope everyone is having a great weekend. I'm still in the studio finishing up work and getting ready to move my whole studio over the next 4 days and then do a trunk show next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! Oy...

New Sonora Sunrise focal beads!

2011-11-25T18:54:00.001-08:00

Howdy all! Thanks for all the kind comments. I can't believe I haven't updated everyone with my new work in Sonora Sunrise! I've cut the LAST of the two super gemmy pieces of rough. These were the last beads I got out of the multiply layered piece of rough pictured on the left above..

and I made these out of the very last pieces of the piece of rough pictured above on the right...

and I made these from the piece in the middle (which I still have an egg sized chunk of left!)...

and I did this batch of chrysocolla with hematite veins from the all chrysocolla segment at the butt end of this same piece of rough...

I've done even more but that's enough pics for now! If you'd like to see more, check out my DVHdesigns eBay store! Hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving weekend, and I hope this Holiday Season folks will support local and independent artists, crafters, and designers.

48 carat Australian Jelly Opal!

2011-10-09T18:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks! I just cut another one. This one a little smaller than the others and with the green fire mixed in with the blue (but not the patch of just minty green). This one is very clean and crystally. I wish the photos showed it off better.......because this doesn't really show how the blue, purple, and green dance throughout the stone. I made another attempt at making a little video of this 48 carat jelly opal and it's taken in direct sunlight and gives a little more perspective on this stone.

The auctions for the other three opals end tomorrow evening and there's a number of watchers and they've received a lot of views, so I'm hopeful to do well with them. I just finished a weekend of having an open studio as one of 100 artist in the Portland Open Studios tour and these stones got a lot of attention! Thanks for looking!

Australian Jelly Opal Focal Bead Pendants

2011-10-05T21:34:00.000-07:00

Howdy Folks! Well I LOVE cutting opals but I seldom can find affordable rough to cut to do the kind of cutting that I want to do. Luckily I have a well to do, rock hound, big brother, who likes to get me opal rough for my birthday! In August he sent me a 3/4 POUND chunk of Australian jelly opal rough as a birthday present! Jelly opal is precious opal that is transparent or mostly transparent with a bluish iridescence. This piece would also be considered crystal opal because it is mostly transparent and has play of color in the blue, purple, and green colors.

My big bro was at a rock and gem show in Northern California and some old timer was selling off his collection and only charging what he paid for the items 30 to 40 years ago, so my brother got a really good deal on the rough. Here's a pic of the rough as I got it.... and from this piece of rough, I was able to cut the following focal bead pendants....

THis freeform measures 57x20mm by 8mm thick with a 3mm drill hole and weighs in at 59 carats....

and this teardrop shaped bead is 53x20mm by 8mm thick, 3mm drill hole, and weighs in at 63 carats...

and the biggest one I cut so far is this one, a long rounded oval, that measures in at 72x17mm by 11mm thick, 3mm drill hole, and weighs a total of 82 carats...

Opals are very hard to photograph as they don't really show the play of color. I have an old camera that takes good macro photos and it is able to take little 30 second videos so I decided to try my hand at making little short videos of the opals moving around in the light. The focus isn't the greatest but they really help see the optical phenomena within the gemstone. Here are the links to the videos on youtube of the above stones if you want to get a better look....

59 carat freeform jelly opal video

63 carat teardrop jelly opal video

82 carat long oval Jelly Opal video

I've already sold two other beads I made out of this rough. There's enough to make one more BIG bead (which I may keep for myself!), two smaller ones (well, small for me, not small for jelly opal beads!) and some smaller pieces that I will probably inlay into my jet mourning beads as they look so good against a black background. If you're interested in any of these beads, they're all in my DVHdesigns eBay store, up at auction closing on Monday.

Thanks for looking and I'll post more pics as I finish the rest of the opals.

Iolite Sunstone from Tanzania, new lapidary work!

2011-08-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

Howdy Folks, lately I've been on YET ANOTHER bit of a spree with phenomenal stones. These are those stones with properties that cause optical phenomena to occur within the stone. The major categories are Asterism in star stones (ruby, sapphire, etc) which is caused by fiber like inclusions in the crystal; Opalescence (opals) a milky to rainbow play of color caused by large spheroid structures of silica in the stone; Labradorescence (labradorites & many feldspars) which is broad multicolor flashing surfaces; Adularescence which is a glowing effect as seen in moonstones; Aventurescence which is a sparkling, more glitter like, effect caused by metal or glassy looking inclusions in the stone; Chatoyance (from the French "Chat Oeil", or "cat eye") which is a gleaming effect all over or in a distinct cat's-eye; Schiller which is a directional sheen or shimmer; and finally Irridescence or Iris effect which is a play of color of rainbow colors often caused by a fracturing within the stone.

I hand cut the lovely freeform, fan shaped, BEAD above which measures 33x39mm and is 9mm thick with a 2mm drill hole that runs through the center of the fan. Great for creative beading. WEIGHT IS 91 CARATS. It has a polished finish all over with low domes on both sides, nicely rounded edges. The stone shows some of the optical effects of schiller, aventurescence, chatoyancy, and iris effects. I carefully oriented this piece when I cut it and multiple optical phenomena are apparent. Most of this iolite has inclusions and healed fractures. In these stones that I have cut, the internal inclusions also create "iris effect" which are little refracted rainbows within the stone. I bought ALL of this rough material that I found available in Tucson this year, which came out to about 7 pounds. That was ALL of the material I saw at all of the shows I went to and I saw NO finished pieces anywhere! There is VERY LITTLE of this material available! If you don't believe me do an internet search for this stone by any of it's various names!

Here's another bead...

I have heard some call this material "Bloodshot Iolite" as well as "iris iolite" and there's even someone in Britain that calls it "starstone". It is a rare and unusual variety of iolite, the gemstone variety of cordierite, which is a magnesium aluminum silicate. This unique variation of iolite has inclusions of small flat platelets of reddish hematite or goethite. This creates the optical phenomena of adventurescence throughout the stone. It is the same mineral and optical effect found in feldspars that are sunstones, so this is also accurately referred to as "sunstone in iolite". Iolite is noted for it's pleasing blue color and is often mistaken for sapphire or tanzanite, which are both much more expensive.

and here's an oval shaped one....

I have never seen ANY of this rough available before my trip to the World's gem & mineral trade shows in Tucson in February of 2009. I saw ONE dealer who had this rough and that first year I bought his 8 nicest pieces, which yielded only 12 to 15 pieces that sold very quickly. Last year, in 2010, I bought only ONE small piece of rough from him. This year, in 2011, I bought ALL that he had, which totaled 7 pounds. That is all I have EVER seen of the rough and if you look around you won't find any other loose beads or custom cut cabs out of this material.

This is another lovely piece of the stuff...

This stone will have the properties of BOTH iolite and sunstone. Here are some of the mystical and healing properties of iolite that I found on the internet,

"As it's soft and gentle nature, iolite is used to help us connect with our souls. It will help us to understand who we are and why we are on the planet at this particular time...use this stone for guidance in difficult areas of your life. What is most unique about working with Iolite is the sense of protection you feel whilst delving into the deepest levels of your self, the comfort and calm it affords you. Iolite gives unconditionally, allow the positive energies of this stone to come into your life. Iolite is one of the best stones to use in psychic, healing, and spiritual activities. It can open one to psychic talents and expand them as well. Iolite is very helpful when dealing with addictions, including alcoholism. It assists in detoxification as well as maintaining sobriety. As well, Iolite is also said to help build relationships whether they be new or old. In the physical realm, iolite is used to help heal sore throat, varicose veins, and blisters, it is also told to aid in diminishing headaches and strengthen the entire system, promoting health on all levels. Iolite is considered a very strong "Shaman" stone, and can stimulate visions."

Here are some of the mystical and healing properties of sunstone that I found on the internet,

"Sunstone has a very positive effect on one's psyche, it promotes good humor, cheerfulness and an even temper. It may provide the necessary stamina and energy to undertake projects and tasks that one may find daunting. It offers self confidence and helps its wearer to discover her own nature and live accordingly. It assists its wearer in maintaining a positive attitude towards her own life and to use inherent strengths while still allowing the sunny side of the personality raise to the forefront. Keep Sunstone with you at all times if you have difficulty saying "no" to people, and you continually make sacrifices for others. Sunstone will detach your feelings of being discriminated against, disadvantaged or abandoned; it will remove inhibitions and hang up, reversing feelings of failure. It will increase feelings of self-worth, and confidence encouraging optimism and enthusiasm. It will switch all feelings to a positive take on any event. Even the most incorrigible pessimist will respond to Sunstone. Sunstone enables and enhances it's wearer with self healing powers. It stimulates the vegetative, autonomic nervous system and enhances the harmonious functioning of all the body's organs. It is quite helpful in cases of exhaustion due to lack of sleep. It will treat chronic sore throats and relieves the pain of stomach ulcers. It is quite successful on Seasonal Affective Disorder (or SAD), it is also known to relieve cartilage problems, rheumatism and general aches and pains. Sunstone will lift depression and free it's wearer from feelings of discrimination and failure as well as images of an 'evil world'. Sunstone easily increases a sense of self-esteem as well as self-worth. Sunstone is particularly beneficial when used in the sun, sunshine, or sunlight."

Well thanks for letting me share! I'm also cutting some fantastic sunstone-moonstone hybrids, some PHENOMENAL silvery black moonstones, and even some deep earthy red moonstones that I call "Martian Moonstone". Back to the grind! (P.S. my primary venue for my work is my DVHdesigns eBay store. I don't really do custom cutting but I do take suggestions!)

New Picasso Marble from Utah!

2011-08-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hi all, I got some more of the rough Picasso marble material from Utah and here is the first batch of stones I cut out of it....One interesting thing about the new material is that in the pieces with the thick, black band, there are some very tiny specks of golden pyrite! Got most of these listed in my eBay store and will be cutting more soon! Thanks for looking.

Picasso Jasper (marble) from China vs. Utah

2011-06-02T23:47:00.000-07:00

Picasso Marble is a really wonderful stone that was first mined in Utah. I cut these using rough material from the big NEW find in China that is noted for it's brick red, forest green and other unique colors. I got ONE chunk of the Chinese rough when I was in Quartzite in January 2011. Not much rough leaves China, for obvious reasons. This material is NOT to be confused with the original find of "PICASSO JASPER" that is from Utah. The UTAH Picasso "Jasper" is really beautiful but it is in shorter supply and has mostly just black, grey, brown, and tan colorings in it that make it distinctive from the Chinese material. The Chinese material is also called "Cherry Creek Jasper" by American lapidaries, but "Picasso Jasper" is used 70 times as often to describe this stone (trust me, I did the eBay searches and I know what I'm looking at!). The rough chunk that I got was very porous and I have heard from a trusted gem dealer friend of mine that much, if not most, of this material coming out of China is treated or stabilized to make it be able to take a polish. I understand why they do this, but I prefer to leave my beads with a satin matte finish rather than soak them in a resin or a urethane just to make them shiny.

The patternings in this material from CHINA are so unique with so many resembling abstract paintings in earthy colors, that there is really nothing quite like it. One of those stones I've never gotten bored with!

A lot of people call it Picasso Jasper, but it is a marble, NOT a jasper. People in the trade use the term "jasper" as if it was interchangeable with the word "stone". Technically it is a metamorphosed limestone occurring in the form of a coarse to medium grained rock of re-crystallized dolomite or calcite. It is now mined in relatively large quantities and is commercially available. It is commonly cut into beads, cabs, donuts, spheres, and carvings. I really enjoy the earthiness and the patterning of this material. For some reason no one else seems quite able to bring the same qualities out of this stone that I do. My Picasso Marble beads are a big hit wherever I go and they have become somewhat of a staple and a signature stone here at DVHdesigns. I think that part of the attraction is that I've been cutting it for years and no matter how much I cut, no two are ever really alike. The rough material from Utah is very similar in "patterning" but it takes a MUCH BETTER polish than the material from China. I've never had any trouble getting a mirror polish on the Utah material using just a muslin buffing wheel with Zam or Fabulustre. Here is a piece from Utah that is currently in my eBay store...

The Utah material has always had the look of bare trees on a dark Fall night! LOVE IT! I've cut more of this Utah material than I have ANY other stone in my life. I bought 100 pounds of it about 15 years ago and I have cut up almost all of it. I may have a pound or two left in scraps! I need to contact one of the few rough dealers that have any left and try and get another couple dozen pounds of rough in stock. It's a staple!

For those interested in the metaphysics of stones, I will include a little bit of information on this stone from Melody, author of Love Is In The Earth. Among the properties she attributes to this beautiful stone are, "facilitates the transformation of intuition into intellectual thought such that one can implement the instructions provided, It assists one to traverse changes , attracting strength and perseverance.....It can help to provide clarity to the inner sight, instilling a passionless peace of imperturability via the annihilations of disturbing thoughts." She goes on to say that, "It acts to stimulate the circulatory system, to reduce anxiety and stress, and to assist in digestions, regulation, and metabolism. It has been used in the treatment of carpal tunnel syndrome, cellular and organ toxicity, and to promote weight loss. " WOW! What a stone!

Thanks for letting me share my work here. I'm having a 20% off sale in my eBay store, with free shipping, until June 6th, so if you're inclined, check it out!

"Sonora Sunrise" Chrysocolla & Cuprite 2011

2011-04-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks! A little over a year ago I ran a thread with images of work I did out of Sonora Sunrise and I included a picture of the one, four pound chunk of rough I had got in Tucson along with some images of the beads and cabs I cut from that rough. This year I scoured Quartzsite and Tucson for more of this beautiful rough! There wasn't much rough to be had and prices had increased a lot since last year. The one dealer I saw who had any quantity of decent quality rough, maybe a few hundred pounds, was asking 400% more than I had paid for that same quality last year. I ended up getting one decent 6 pound piece of rough from a dealer in Quartzsite and two small, top notch, AAA+ quality pieces that weighed about 2 pounds each, that I got from yet another dealer in Tucson. Less than 10 pounds total and a significant percentage of that gets ground into dust during sawing and shaping!

Sonora Sunrise is a completely natural mixture of chrysocolla (the turquoise colored part) and cuprite (the orange part) and tenorite (the black part) and sometimes brochantite (green specks). They're all copper minerals. It's from Mexico and has only been available in the lapidary world for 4 or 5 years. Very little is available and it is highly doubtful Here's a pic of the rough....

I really, REALLY, LOVE this stuff and wish there was more of it! I've already cut up about half of this stash. From the small piece on the left, which has the wonderful banding of blue-white, blue, black, orange, black, and blue! This is probably some of the BEST material I've ever seen in this and I've already taken steps to keep two of the stones I made out of this for myself (last years piece was as good or better and I did NOT save one for myself!)

and here are some pieces I made out of the "blue white" part of the chrysocolla, along with a natural edged "tornado" shaped cab I made, and the little orange pointed teardrop is made from the other piece of top quality rough (the small piece on the right of the pic of rough).... In this next pic, the top row is made from the piece of the rough on the right as well. I consider this top notch, AAA+ material as well. The bottom row is all made from the large chunk in the middle of the picture. I really love the subtler, more variegated and muted colors and patterns of turquoise and orange found in the larger chunk of rough and it actually takes a little better polish than the more vivid quality colored rough. IF I had never been exposed to the AAA rough, I would still be absolutely ga-ga over the rough from the middle piece of rough! All this material came from the same mine.

The larger chunk has the cuprite only running across the top edge of the rough. You can see in the 3rd and 6th beads in the bottom row that I left the top of the bead with the natural surface of the stone. So on that larger piece there was a significant piece that was mostly chrysocolla with the turquoise blue grey coloring but it has a VERY cool vein of hematite-iron oxide that runs through it and in some places that vein turns to orange cuprite. I'm enjoying just playing with the bisecting pattern of that vein as well! If one can have a love affair with a kind of rock, that's what I'm having with this stone!

FYI, a little education about the nomenclature of this stone and some caveat emptor if you're buying "Sonora Sunrise". The name is a "trade name" for this particular combination of chrysocolla and cuprite from Sonora, Mexico. It has also been co-opted by Chinese dealers for fake gemstones. I just did a search on eBay and there are only 400 items that come up with a search for "sonora sunrise". Out of those 400 items, 288 are "sonora sunrise jasper" pendants or cabs and every SINGLE ONE is a dyed, unnatural color, sold by Hong Kong dealers, and is NOT sonora sunrise at all! Sonora Sunrise is NOT a jasper anyway. Interestingly, if you do an advanced search for "sonora sunrise -jasper" out of the 112 responses one gets, nearly every one IS genuine Sonora Sunrise Chrysocolla and is sold by an American Lapidary. Just doing my bit to educate the beaders and jewelers of the world about real and unique semi-precious gemstones!

Thanks for letting me share my work and my stone geek knowledge!

New work in genuine jet, mourning jewelry, a new story...

2011-04-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

Good Mourning Folks,

It's been quite awhile since I wrote about my work with jet and making mourning jewelry. If you check my old thread you can see all the information that I've posted before. I'm still working quite a bit of jet and I gave a lecture last month for the Portland Bead Society about the history of jet and my work with jet. It went over really well and I'm tentatively schedule to give the jet lecture again for the San Diego Bead Society in January of next year!

I learned even more about jet while preparing for my powerpoint lecture for PBS. Most people are familiar with jet's historic uses in Victorian times as traditional mourning jewelry to help women deal with their bereavement, and as one of the only true, naturally black, organic accessories available to go with a widow's weeds. Dealing with my own grief from loss of family and the ravages of surviving 30 years of the AIDS epidemic is one of the things that has pushed me, and keeps pushing me, to work with this unusual organic gemstone. Of course a lot of people think that because jet is black and it was used in Victorian mourning jewelry that it has ALWAYS been associated with death. I was happy to discover that is just not true!

In my research I found out that the cult of the Phrygian Earth goddess Cybele, the "Great Mother" of the ancient gods and goddesses, has an association with jet! Her cult spread from northern Turkey to Greece and then throughout the Roman empire. She was known as the "black stone", or the black faced goddess, because the most famous statue of her had a black meteorite for it's face! (unknown whether it was just a rough black meteorite or if it naturally formed to look like a face or if it had been sculpted to look like a face). To honor her, the priests in her cult wore jet beads! Here's a link to an article in the BBC about the archeological dig where they found this Roman transvestite eunuch priest decked out in jet beads! I still haven't been able to find pictures of THOSE actual beads, in spite of having directly contacted the guy who did this dig.

So I continue to work in jet and explore it's deep history. The earliest jet beads discovered were in an archeological dig in northern Spain and date from 17,000 BCE!. Here's some pics of my current work in jet....

Most everything I take to a high polish but some of them I've been leaving matte finish. My friend in Scotland and I have been collaborating more and here are some necklaces she's strung with some of my jet focal beads... This one has what I call "ash blonde" tigereye beads in it (like much tigereye, I imagine these were color treated with heat or bleaching)

and here are two more necklaces made with jet focals and white magnesite beads. I suspect that the white magnesite, which was sold as "white turquoise" (NO such thing), is reconstituted (certainly the spikes are) but it definitely goes well with the jet focals and jet spacers!

That's all for now! I just wanted to get "back in black" and tell y'all a NEW story about the history of jet! Thanks for letting me share and feel free to check out my DVHdesigns eBay store if you would like to see more of my work!

The Goddess Opal & the Virgin Yowah Nut Opal

2011-04-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! Haven't blogged for a long time now it seems, but I've got some help now in the studio with my photography and eBay listing so I'm getting lots more cut and will hopefully have more time to share images of my work and my thoughts on gems and stones.

This is my current favorite new stone! I call it my "Goddess Opal".

I hand cut and polished this piece out of a rare and unusual piece of rough. It is a conglomerate, or cluster, of little pieces of genuine Lightning Ridge Black Opal still in the soft, sandy matrix in which it is found in the mines in Australia. I got this ONE chunk of rough and rather than cut it up into a half dozen very small cabs I decided to work with it as is, including the matrix as a part of the pendant, and I am thrilled with the result! This piece feels very "Goddess/ss'ssssyyyyy" to me and has since I started cutting it. It feels electric and organic, watery and hard, like it could be found at the bottom of the sea or in the desert at the end of a lightning bolt.... I wore this to Faerie Coffee here in Portland, Oregon today and someone said "Holy Cow! What's THAT! It looks like an electric Venus of Willendorf.

The total weight on this piece is 218 cts, including the matrix. There are 8 protrusions of solid opal that shows beautiful, electric purple color and fire. There are 3 more protusions of solid opal that are also lovely but don't show any fire, just clear or cloudy opal. The entire piece measures 60x36x26mm and there is a 3mm drill hole through the matrix. I hand sanded all the opal surfaces. To help strengthen the matrix I applied a thin layer of a cyanoacrylate stabilizing agent which just barely soaked into the soft matrix and allowed me to put a minor polish on the rock like muddy matrix that these opals occur in. The whole piece was tumbled for a few hours in a gentle tumbler with a 600 grit abrasive to both strength test it and to put a soft organic, uniform feel to the whole shape after my initial sanding of the black opal surfaces. I then hand polished all the opal surfaces and put a buff polish on the surface of the matrix.

This amazing stone looks like some wierd combination of jelly fish and fungus with a purple bioluminscent glow. It evokes a flowery form and has been stopping people in their tracks when I wear it! Here's another view of the same stone....

Here's another stone that is also an opal, and also from Australia, and also makes me think "Goddess" but it couldn't be more different!

I hand cut and polished this piece out of a rare and unusual piece of rough. It is from a stone nodule called a Yowah Nut, which is a concretion of opal and ironstone in matrix. Found in the mines of Queensland, Australia. I got this ONE chunk of rough and I wasn't too impressed because I could tell that the opal in this piece was just transparent honey colored, with no fire or play of color. I liked the patterns though and decided to cut it into an amulet. It wasn't until I was doing the final polishing on it that I saw the FIGURE coming out of the cave in the center of the stone!!!! This piece feels very "God/dess/ss'ssssyyyyy" to me and has since I started cutting it. I don't know if it's Mary, Guadalupe, Jesus, or some prophet coming out of that dark brown cave surrounded by honey colored opal, but it has blown my mind and surprised everyone I've shown it to! I see a cloaked figure, hands folded, with a tiny little cross above their head. It also looks like the figure is emanating from the small dark brown pillar at the base, almost like a Genie from a bottle. What do you see? How does this stone speak to you?

The total weight on this piece is 130 cts. The entire piece measures 53x40x8mm and there is a 4mm drill hole through the matrix on the top of the face. I hand polished all the opal surfaces and put a buff polish on the surface of the matrix which were too soft to take a high polish. Here's another image of the cloaked figure emerging from the cave, with a little more detail....

That's it for now! I'm cutting lots more stuff in all different kinds of materials, so I hope folks will check out my work!

Tucson continues...

2011-01-28T22:04:00.000-08:00

Quartzcite was fun, with additions to the rock stash and some interesting silver pendants made by a Siberian artist.. Afterwards it was on to Phoenix for a couple of nights and a trip up to Flagstaff with Jim Horste (the brother). While Jim was negotiating with a fluorescent rock collector, we went off to the wonderful National Monument of Wupatki (Indian Ruins) and Sunset Crater Volcano , both of which are highly recommendable.
Then off to Tucson on Wednesday where we arrived to find that our rental house had been burgled BEFORE we arrived! I didn't mind too much that they took the microwave, tv, dvd, and coffee table but they took the WIFI and the MODEM!!!! We couldn't even get on line in a bookstore or the hotels! Luckily we're back on line at the rental house (and the locks were changed right after we got here!).

Yesterday we dropped by the Tucson Electric Park show as they were setting up and Jan scored some incredible beads out of some very gemmy stuff including some amazing Ethiopian opal beads!

I spent a good part of today doing some fluorescent mineral database work for my brother Jim (and waiting on the internet tech guy to get us all back online!). Then Jan and I headed out for the Pueblo Inn Gem Show where we caught our favorite dealers while they were still setting up! I CORNERED the market on iolite sunstone from Tanzania! WOOT! Also got green moonstone, golden feldspar, some glittery sunstones, kyanites, ONE piece of tanzanite, a chunck of rose quartz and a few other bits all from the same dealer! Then Jan scored a few polished pieces of agatized bamboo before she hit the spectrolite dealer and got some splendoriffic material from Finland from the former Mayor of Ylamma, the center of Finnish spectrolite production. For those who don't know, spectrolite is the trade name for the FINEST labradorite in the world which only comes from Finland!

Tomorrow we'll get our camera situation figured out and I'll finally start posting some pics to our blog of Jan and David's continuing adventures!

From Cruise to QUARTZITE!

2011-01-23T22:25:00.000-08:00

Howdy Folks! I just did my first trunk show on a cruise ship and met lots of new friends and sold some great gemstone beads. My chum Jan from Scotland sold some of her fabulous necklaces! Right now we're in Quartzite, Arizona and just finished a day of shopping. I got some great fire agate which will make magnificent beads. I also bought some cherry creek jasper from China, got some Sonora Sunrise, California Jade, mookite from Australia, beautiful grreek jasper from China, got some Sonora Sunrise, California Jade, beautiful green Utah variscite, BLACK moonstone from Madagascar, and MORE!

Pictures coming soon and I'll be in Tucson in a couple of days!

Pink Drusy Heart Beads, Cobalto Calcite from the Congo

2011-01-11T02:18:00.000-08:00

Hey folks, it's almost Valentine's day and so I've taken a dip into pink and into hearts!

Wonderful clean surfaces with HOT pink crystals all across the front. COMPLETELY NATURAL AND UNTREATED! Very rare and beautiful. The grey host rock is sanded and polished clean. Compare with other cobalto calcite for sale on the internet! You won't find beads like this! I only had enough rough to make a total of 10 beads out of this material this year and most of them pretty small and this is one of only TWO hearts that I was able to make. Valentines Day is coming up! No idea if I'll get more of this rough material in Tucson this year....

Here's a more raspberry pink color

This is the famous pink drusy Cobalto Calcite from the Congo, formerly known as Zaire, where most of it is mined from the Kakanda Mine, Shaba Province. I try to find a few nice specimens when I am in Tucson each year although it is quite rare to find decent pieces. There is a lot of conflict and social strife in Central Africa and the export of pink crystals isn't given priority compared with the mining of tantalum and other rare metals for your cell phone and high tech devices! It is usually sold by the malachite dealers as this hot pink mineral is found in the malachite mines! There is little to no visible bruising to any of the crystals and they all REALLY sparkle! According to some metaphysical info I pulled from the internet, this stone is "calming, centering and grounding, it is used for love rituals...it's an energy amplifier said to help the body and mind remember astral travel, channeling, and the state of pure perfection. Helps clear and activate all your chakras..."

Here's the last of the larger sized ones I was able to make. A freeform...

This mineral is always a lovely light pink to dark magenta and in addition to being popularly known as Cobalto Calcite is is also known as Cobalticalcite, Sphaerocobaltite, and Cobaltian Calcite. The crystals are not hard like quartz, so don't bang these around!

I'll get the last 4 smaller ones finished in the next day or so and share pics of those here as well.

Thanks for letting me share!

Crosses in silver plumes, fine silver in quartz, and serpentine copper ore, OH MY!

2011-01-03T15:05:00.000-08:00

Hey Folks! Hope all have had a happy new year and survived the holiday season. I'm excited about the new year and getting ready for my first show of the year, which is on a cruise ship in the Western Caribbean in 10 days! My first big batch of new stuff has been working with rare metal minerals.

My oldest brother is good about getting me cutting rough as a present and for Christmas I got some rare silver ore with plumes in it from the famous silver mines in Cobalt, Ontario. The silver mines in this area have mostly long closed, and rough lapidary material is only available from old collections or from folks who have been able to rockhound and collect on the mine dumps. If you do a google or eBay search for this kind of material you're unlikely to find any, and certainly not made into beads! The patterns in the plumes are just spectacular, but this is the one that really blew my mind...

There is a row of natural silver crystal dendrites in this beautiful gem that formed a row of CROSSES! I've never seen any formation like it before and I doubt I ever will again! A wonderful gift for the Christian who loves his or her geology as well! A testament of faith and miracles in a rare mineral specimen. Here is what the bead looks like on the other side, and right side up...

and here is another piece I did using this rare rough that has crystallized silver plumes. The white base material is most likely dolomite.. I got several small pieces of this stuff that had the white matrix. I got one chunk of the silver plume ore that has a black matrix and there are wires and blobs of native silver (pure metal) in this bead and the others that will come from this small chunk of rough. I really like the contrast of the silver plumes against the black...

Those specimens are all completely natural formations of silver ore and native silver in matrix. I hand cut this fabulous shield shaped bead which measures 29x16mm with a 3mm drill hole. Weight is 47 carats. Beautiful solid natural bull quartz from Alaska that is infused with PURE, 99.9% fine SILVER through a new hydrothermal heat pressure process and then stabilized! So this is MANUFACTURED fine silver in natural quartz. The images don't fully capture the shininess of the dense spiderweb of solid, pure, Fine Silver that runs throughout the natural white and brownish quartz. Every dark line you see in the image is really super shiny, Fine Silver. I got three small chunks of this exotic (and pricey) material when I was in Tucson in 2009, back when silver was WAY cheaper, and this is one of the LAST THREE of them that I made with the LAST of my rough! Eureka Gems, who process and market this rough and THIN cabs that they cut from it, explained to me that because of the demand for gold in quartz cabs and jewelry, they had, "through the merging of chemistry, physics, and the art of metallurgy" developed a process in 2004 which allowed them to mimic nature and infuse precious metal into natural stone. Each 2 kilo block of natural quartz is treated and produced in a lab and takes 7 to 8 weeks from start to finish as the block undergoes the hydrothermal heat pressure process. The quartz is heated to fracture, the fine silver (or other metal) is pressure driven into the cracks, it's cooled slowly and the whole thing is pressure stabilized with resin so that every bit is tight and clean! It smells like cutting stabilized turquoise when it's cut, but it's harder (because of the quartz) and the metal veins can catch on your sanding belts if one is not careful. Here's a cab I made out of the same material...

Finally, I just finished this cab and bead made out of a dark green serpentine from a location on the Northern California border with Oregon. There are flecks of native copper (pure metal) within the stone, as well as clouds of another silvery gray metal mineral, most likely hematite.

and here's a cab in the same material....

I also finished some nice drusy psilomelanes, which is a manganese based material in chalcedony, but I'll post those in another thread.

71x29mm green MOONSTONE w/ blue flash 240ct BEAD (sunstone & opal too!)

2010-12-13T23:11:00.000-08:00

Hey Folks! I'm really plunging back into "phenomenal gems" (optical phenomena that is) with THIS piece. This is the first piece I've done with any inlay in it in a very long time....

I hand cut this wonderful, freeform, oval teardrop shaped bead out of moonstone rough from Tanzania! The base of the moonstone is a minty green grey that shows a tremendous silvery blue flash that is very well oriented on both sides. It measures 71x29mm and is 14mm thick with a 3mm drill hole. Low rounded faces and edges. It has a really nice polish and great orientation in it's adularescence. One face is inlaid with a domed, 7mm round cabochon of CATS EYE SUNSTONE, also from Tanzania. A small, pink flash, 3mm Australian opal is inlaid on the other side. This is one of the nicest pieces of moonstone I've ever cut! You won't see another one like this! Internal fractures are completely healed inclusions and do NOT mar the surface of the stone or it's glow nor do they threaten the structural integrity of the stone.

This pendant showcases "phenomenal stones" which are gemstones which exhibit optical phenomena. In the big blue shimmmer is a kind of Adularescence which is a glowing effect as seen in moonstones; on the sides one sees some examples of Aventurescence which is a sparkling, more glitter like, effect caused by metal or glassy looking inclusions in the stone; In the sunstone there is both of the above effects AND Chatoyance (from the French "Chat Oeil", or "cat eye") which is a gleaming effect all over or in a distinct cat's-eye; Schiller which is a directional sheen or shimmer can also be decerned; the little Australian opal one sees Opalescence (opals) a milky to rainbow play of color caused by large spheroid structures of silica in the stone; and finally in one or two of the healed fractures of the moonstone, one can see Irridescence or Iris effect which is a play of color of rainbow colors often caused by a fracturing within the stone.

I've copied the wiki definition of moonstone below for your information. That is followed with a bit of info on the metaphysics of the stone.

"Moonstone is typically a potassium aluminium silicate, with the chemical formula KAlSi3O8."

"The most common moonstone is of the mineral adularia. The plagioclase feldspar oligoclase also produces moonstone specimens. Its name is derived from a visual effect, or sheen, caused by light reflecting internally in the moonstone from layer inclusion of different feldspars."

"Moonstone's delicate beauty and its long heritage make it perhaps the most familiar gem quality member of the feldspar group. Moonstone is composed of two feldspar species, orthoclase and albite. The two species are intermingled. Then, as the newly formed mineral cools, the intergrowth of orthoclase and albite separates into stacked, alternating layers. When light falls between these thin, flat layers, it scatters in many directions producing the phenomenon called adularescence."

"Deposits of moonstone are found in many countries and places: the European Alps; Brazil; India; Mexico; Myanmar; Madagascar; Sri Lanka; the USA, specifically Pennsylvania and Virginia; and Tanzania. However, it is Sri Lanka that produces the highest quality moonstones."

and from a different source is the following information... "Mystic Lore: Intuitive sources say that Moonstone is a stone of emotional harmony and wellbeing. It has been revered for centuries in India as a stone which can bring harmony and good fortune to marriages and love relationships. Moonstone is said to help one relax and enjoy life, and to help one fully love & appreciate others."

Thanks for letting me share my work on this forum and have a great day!

Kyanite, Bloodshot Iolite, Tanzanite, continued

2010-12-07T15:58:00.000-08:00

My pieces are completely natural and on this teardrop shaped kyanite I left one side of the bead with the natural face of the crystal which shows the natural surface and sparkles

Here is a piece of the "bloodshot iolite" which is a Tanzanian iolite that has spangles of Aventurescence that make it have a bit of a sunstone effect. This is one of the very last pieces I have of this really rare material.

and finally, a piece of genuine tanzanite, also from Tanzania (naturally!). Iolite is often mistaken for Tanzanite and it can be very challenging for the average bead buyer to be able to tell the difference between blue Brazilian kyanite, iolites, and tanzanites. The best way to know for sure is to buy from a reputable dealer and to learn by comparing verifiable samples next to each other. This particular Tanzanite bead is obviously NOT a gem grade sample, it's specimen grade, but it IS a real gemstone and one doesn't often find a 72 carat genuine Tanzanite. For folks who are interested in the metaphysical properties of the stone, this is a great deal and the healed fractures create little sparkles that create Irridescence or Iris effect witihin the stone.... and here is a picture of the 192 carat rough piece of Tanzanite that I made this shield shaped bead from

SO a 192 carat piece of rough yield only one 72 carat stone! That's over 60% waste, which is one of the reasons I don't like to spend a lot of money on rare and exotic rough gemstones!

Thanks for letting me share. Everything l post is also in my DVHdesigns eBay store and I regularly have 99 cent, no reserve auctions, and other specials.

Kyanite, Bloodshot Iolite, Tanzanite, & optical phenomena

2010-12-06T21:56:00.000-08:00

Howdy Folks, lately I've been on YET ANOTHER bit of a spree with phenomenal stones. These are those stones with properties that cause optical phenomena to occur within the stone. The major categories are Asterism in star stones (ruby, sapphire, etc) which is caused by fiber like inclusions in the crystal; Opalescence (opals) a milky to rainbow play of color caused by large spheroid structures of silica in the stone; Labradorescence (labradorites & many feldspars) which is broad multicolor flashing surfaces; Adularescence which is a glowing effect as seen in moonstones; Aventurescence which is a sparkling, more glitter like, effect caused by metal or glassy looking inclusions in the stone; Chatoyance (from the French "Chat Oeil", or "cat eye") which is a gleaming effect all over or in a distinct cat's-eye; Schiller which is a directional sheen or shimmer; and finally Irridescence or Iris effect which is a play of color of rainbow colors often caused by a fracturing within the stone.

I got quite an interesting assortment of Tanzanian phenomenal gemstones when I was in Tucson the last two years. My favorite has been the kyanite, and to a lesser degree (because of lesser quality mostly), some bloodshot iolite and tanzanite.

I still have a decent supply of Tanzania Kyanite from which I cut these....

Cutting Kyanite is a real challenge! But since I found a good deal on good quality crystals, I bought some rough and am quite happy with the spectacular results! Well worth the challenge. Here's what the Goddess of Lapidary Journal, the famous June Culp Zeitner says about Kyanite in her book, Gem and Lapidary Materials, (the Bible for the lapidary!) in the chapter on Rare, Little-Known, and Unusual Gem Materials, (emphasis mine) "Blue gems are among the most popular, but unfortunately kyanite, although possessed of a wonderful true blue color, is seldom cut. Crystals are thin, splinterry, and brittle, and cleavage is prounounced....A Chrome green kyanite comes from Tanzania. Pink, gray, yellow, and brown crystal are also known. Not many stones are over 10 carats....It is transparent to translucent and often color zoned. A major fault as a lapidary material is that the faces of the crystal have extreme variations in hardness....Occasionally kyanite is chatoyant, so small cats eye cabochons can be cut, but cutting the cat's-eye is as difficult as faceting, so cut kyanite stones are not at all common. Avoiding the cleavage planes is critical in cutting." (emphasis mine)

For those interested in the metaphysics of gemstones, in her book Love Is In The Earth, New Age author Melody says (underlined emphasis hers, bold mine) "...one of the minerals in the mineral kingdom that never needs cleaning or clearing. It will not accumulate or retain negative energy or vibrations. The energy of kyanite is unlimited in application, making it one of the very best attunement stones." She goes on to say, "Kyanite aligns all chakras automatically and immediately, with no conscious direction. If directed with the consciousness of the user, it can also open the chakras...brings tranquility and calming effect to the whole being...stimulates communication and psychic awareness on all levels..dispels anger and frustration...provides a stimulating energy and supports one in the continuation of projects...." and she goes on and on about the wonders of kyanite. Then she says, and I quote with the emphasis and capitalization of the author, "Kyanite Facilitates Meditation! Whenever there is a problem with respect to 'getting into' meditation, the calming, clearing effect of kyanite can be useful....also when accessing the astral plane and when connecting with ones guides....provides for balancing of the yin-yang energies, bringing an orderly growth to the intellect, emotions and physical body." And there's more, but I'll leave it at that and suffice it to say that Kyanite is evidently a VERY POWERFUL METAPHYSICAL GEMSTONE!

I'll post pics of the iolite and the tanzanite tomorrow. I'm pretty spent from a long day at the studio, all of it at the computer and NONE of it at the wheels. Tomorrow I'll have to treat myself to cutting some new stones. Thanks for letting me share!

Woolly Mammoth Ivory Beads & Amulets by DVHdesigns

2010-11-22T18:01:00.000-08:00

Hey all! I just finished up this batch of beads and amulets using the very last bits of my woolly mammoth ivory! I used to cut a LOT of mammoth ivory and sold a lot on eBay, but a few years ago eBay ended ALL ivory sales, whether it was LEGAL mammoth ivory or not! I got a great deal on some nice loose little chunks of mammoth ivory when I was in Tucson last February so I decided to do another batch. I CAN sell them in my DVHdesignsBEADS Etsy store and they're all listed there now. Here's a group image of all of them....and here are some close ups of several of the pieces.... this really long piece has the natural outside "bark" of the tusk on it, and two large holes, one at either end, for creative beading!

while this piece shows some bark with the rest of it polished smooth. The buckskin coloring is from the mineral content of the permafrost that the ivory was buried in for thousands of years. Here is a piece of mammoth ivory that is NOT discolored and looks as if it came off a mammoth very recently, not over 10,000 years ago!

This material is collected by Inuits and other native peoples in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia and can only be gathered for a few months every summer during the thaw. Of course that's changing with all the permafrost melting due to climate change, so more Mammoth ivory is being exposed in Arctic regions. The coloration depends on how well it is preserved and what minerals might have been present where it was found. It is anywhere from 10,000 to several million years old. Mammoths and Mastodons died out over 10,000 years ago and using this organic gemstone does not threaten any endangered species. This is sometimes referred to as "fossil ivory" however it has not turned to stone, it is still and organic gemstone and not a rock or mineral.

While this material works and cuts like contemporary elephant ivory, it does NOT harm elephants. I continue to support the worldwide ban on elephant ivory trade. According to wikipedia, "Trade in the ivory from the tusks of dead mammoths has occurred for 300 years and continues to be legal. Mammoth ivory is used today to make handcrafted knives and similar implements. Mammoth ivory is rare and costly, because mammoths have been extinct for millennia and scientists loathe to sell museum-worthy specimens in pieces, but this trade does not threaten any living species." Most mammoth ivory that is found is NOT museum quality pieces but rather broken chunks and this is the majority of the material that is brought to the lapidary market from the Canadian, American, and Siberian mammoth ivory dealers.

People often ask what the difference is between mammoths and mastodons. The main difference is their teeth and their diet! Mammoths had slightly larger, more curved tusks, and they were grazers, eating mostly grasses. Mastodon means "nipple teeth" and they were browsers that mainly ate leaves, tree shoots, and fruits. One can not tell the difference in species from looking at just the ivory of the beast. One would have to see the surface of a molar or more of the skeleton to determine the species.

I have heard said that metaphysically mammoth ivory helps one communicate with the ancestor spirits. According to Melody, in her book, Love Is in the Earth, "Ivory represents purity and promotes vitality directed towards rightness in purpose and direction. It assists in expelling restlessness, anxiety, moodiness and derision, while stimulating initiative, dignity, and serenity. It also helps to eliminate obstructive forces in the physical world, providing for a clear pathway for incoming transactions and resources. It can be used in the treatment of bone disorders and in the regeneration activities required to ameliorate these disorders. It can also be quite useful in diminishing problems associated with soreness and stiffness of joints, flexibility of the limbs," and more!

The mammoth ivory and some other items I've made are in my Etsy store, however I still put almost all of my inventory in my DVHdesigns eBay store. Check it out for more cool one of a kind, custom cut, gemstone beads and genuine jet mourning jewelry!

Thanks for letting me share my work here in this forum.

Purple Lavender Jadeite Jade bead pendants I made...

2010-10-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks! I just finished these three bead-pendants out of some of the very last of the genuine lavender purple jadeite jade rough that I have! These two beads were made from the very last of a high quality chunk I got about 15 years ago....

and I made this large shield bead out of a random chunk that I found for sale at the Quartzite gem show in February of 2010....I really like the patterning in this piece although it's not as purple as the stuff I had before.

The majority of the nearly 2,000 items listed on eBay and labeled as "lavender jade" are neither lavender, nor jade! The same goes for the nearly 5,000 items listed as "purple jade". Maybe 5% of the nearly 5,000 listings are jade that is lavender or purple in color and is actual jade. This is one of the RAREST GEMSTONES I CUT. There wont' be many more. I heard that the mine in Turkey has stopped producing and the rough wasn't making it to the U.S. anyway, it all went to China. Here's what my last piece of rough looks like and it's the rough I used to make the big shield bead....

When in Tucson this last February I saw two dealers, out of thousands, who had strands of genuine lavender jade and a few cut pieces, but NO rough! Very rare stuff!

I went to a gem show about 15 years ago and found some of this great material from which I cut the teardrop and the smaller shield with the better color. This one dealer at the show had about 40 kilos of this marvelous lavender Jadeite. It turns out that his synthetic opal supplier in Hong Kong is the only importer and primary buyer for this rare material. I was told that he has a contract with the mine in Turkey for 5 tons monthly to be shipped to Hong Kong for the bead and carving industry. Evidently that is pretty much the mine's maximum production and thus cutting rough rarely shows up in North America. Because of this dealer's contacts he was able to get 50 kilos of rough. I high graded through the 40 kilos left and picked out a wonderful one kilo piece, which I've slowly been cutting down over the years and those two beads above are from the very LAST of that chunk. Didn't see ANY rough in Tucson the last three years although this year in 2010 I DID get the one small chunk of the more gray colored material in Quartzite that was just sitting there, orphaned in a rock pile (see image above)! The only other major location for lavender jadeite is in Burma (now Myanmar and politically unstable under a Military Dictatorship). Other locations for different colors of jadeite are in Guatemala (source of Olmec, Aztec, and Mayan jadeite) and in California.

Here is some of what June Culp Zeitner of Lapidary Journal has to say about Jadeite in her book, Gem and Lapidary Materials, "There are two minerals correctly called Jade: jadeite and nephrite. Of the two, jadeite is harder than nephrite and the color range is brighter and more varied.... A tough member of the pyroxene group, good jadeite is as scarce as it is desirable. It has a crystalline structure, a granular texture, and a vitreous lustre. Jadeite is found in highly metamorphosed serpentines in masses and veins, and as alluvial boulders.... When pure, jadeite is white; however, the colors include tints and shades of green, mauve, lavender, red, blue, brown, orange, and yellow.... Aztecs considered jade a material more precious than gold.... Jadeite is selected for color, grain, and translucency. It is one of the best carving materials and is also used extensively for high-fashion jewelry, especially the more intense greens and mauves. Much of the imperial jade, and other superb colors of translucent jade, is cut in Hong Kong, or marketed through Hong Kong.... Good jadeite has become so expensive that rough material once used for remarkable carvings, like the Smithsonian's 22 inch lavender jade vase, is now being cut into cabochons. "

In Chinese tradition, jade symbolized the five virtues of humanity: wisdom, compassion, justice, modesty and courage. Symbols of these virtues were often carved into jade.

If you are interested in the mystical properties of jade, here is some info I found on the Shimmerlings website "Jade is a gemstone of much history, it has been part of Asian philosophy for centuries. It is often called the "dream stone" for its ability to help one access the non-physical spirit realms. It is a protective stone, and acts as a ward against negative energies. This is a stone that can help you to attain your goals and dreams, instilling resourcefulness, and allowing you to see past your self imposed limitations and manifest your ideas into the physical world. Jade, considered a very lucky stone, facilitates peace and harmony between the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of ones life. When all of these aspects operate in harmony and balance, goals become easier to reach. It is said to promote courage, compassion, justice, generosity, humility, wealth and longevity, to lead a richer more fulfilling life."

Here is what they say about the healing properties of jade, "Jade is said to be a stone of the heart, strengthening it as well as the kidneys, nervous system and immune system and to promote health in the organs that purify the blood. Jade of all types and colors are very protective and particularly strong for children against illness." They refer specifically to lavender jade when they say it "is known to assist with fresh ideas and creativity. It is said to bring psychic understanding of ones dreams, and to aid in recovering form any negative love situation."

Thanks for giving me a forum in which to share my work and information about the stones!

"Beads are artifacts of the minds big bang"

2010-09-20T17:29:00.000-07:00

A fascinating piece on the history of bead making and human evolution. My favorite bit, "Beads are artifacts of the minds big bang. They are evidence of our creative and cultural beginning, recalling a time when bands of humans began interacting socially with one another" which led to "humans using technology in the service of social identity."

More Sonoran Sunrise

2010-09-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Ok folks, I really dived back into this material! Here are some cabs...

and here is a really amazing BIG cab,

Also, from the same piece of rough, came these really lovely centerpiece beads...

This one is my particular favorite.
The oranges aren't really quite as bright and vivid under normal light as they are in the images. I took the pics under 4 incandescent bulbs and the brick-red-orange cuprite really pops under those lights and I can't seem to just tone down those colors when I photograph this stuff.

All the above stones came from one distinct piece of rough. Here are two centerpiece beads I made in a nearly perfect match of double ended tapers, which I also call a "lingam" shape, after the aniconic representation of the God Shiva used in Hindu temples

That's all I have finished and photographed at the moment but there's lots more cabs and beads in process, some of which I'm going to leave matte finish, which I'll share with y'all shortly. The above items are in my eBay store and some are also in my Etsy store. Here's a pic of the whole batch of stuff I started on last week, all roughed out, some of which are seen finished above and the others of which are still in process....

Thanks for letting me share!

New Sonora Sunrise custom cut beads

2010-09-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

Howdy Folks! Well it's been since April that I last updated you with Sonora Sunrise. I cut up every scrap of that really awesome 4 pound chunk I got in Tucson last February and sold every piece of it! I got some other Sonora Sunrise rough from an internet dealer and it's also lovely stuff, but the colors are more brick red and teal, as opposed to the brilliant turquoise and orange of the stuff I previously listed. The colors and contrasts are still really beautiful, just not quite as "shocking" as the high grade rough I got in Tucson. Of course I only paid a third the price for this quality of rough as I did for what I high graded. It's all beautiful stuff, nonetheless!

I photographed all of these under 4 incandescent light bulbs, so the colors do pop a little more than they would under more subdued lighting, but it really gives one an idea of the incredible color and contrast in this stone. Here's my favorite, a big SWOOSH shaped bead... and here are some smaller shapes made with pieces from the same chunk of rough...

From another piece of rough, I hand cut this "wonkyheart" shaped bead which measures 45x30mm and is 13mm thick with a 3mm drill hole. Low domed faces and a nice polish. Nice contrasted coloring, a little bit more of a red brick color than the pictures show, with a bright crimson vein of cuprite in the center vein, along with some green brochantite, and a reflective vien of a metallic hematite running through it as well!

ANd this color combo came from another different piece of small Sonora Sunrise rough. Such lovely diversity of color, contrast, and patterns in this stone...

Thanks for looking and letting me share. I'll be cutting more of this material soon!

Two BIG boat paint varieties of fordite!

2010-08-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I've taken the largest two slices that I'm able to get of my Boat paint variety of fordite and made these two lovely pieces. This bead measures 70x25mm and has a low dome either side, measures 6mm thick and has a 2.5mm drill hole. The weight is a little over 57 carats. You may think I'm crazy to put a carat weight on this "faux gemstone" but the person who has listed the MOST of it on eBay puts a carat weight on ALL his fordite. I want people to be able to see that one can get something 25 times more substantial from me for the same price!

And 57 carats isn't very heavy, only a little over 11 grams or about 1/3 an ounce!

This large half round or half oval cabochon is from the same piece of boat paint variety of fordite. It is 52x21mm by 7mm with a nice low dome and flat polished back with a weight of 36 carats. This would look great bezel set into a pendant or brooch and could go with a lot of different colors and styles of jewlery. I like it in some ways better than the traditional automotive fordite. Since this is a marine paint it also cuts and shapes and polishes better than automotive fordite and it's stronger to boot! The only piece of rough I have left is now smaller than an egg in size.

Thanks for letting me share and have a great weekend!

New FORDITE cabs and beads!

2010-08-16T21:42:00.000-07:00

Hi folks! It's been a bit of a crazy summer but I'm keeping going!

I have SOOOOO many things started and so few finished! Finally here are pics of the "Fordite" that I've been working on. I'm taking a break from stocking my Etsy store and I'm still putting the majority of things in my eBay store. I'm really frustrated with having two store fronts and not sure how to handle the on line marketing of my work. I fired my "Trading Assistant" who had been doing my photography and listing for 6 months because he was just making too many mistakes and not taking decent quality images, so I'm back to working alone and doing everything myself.

There are totally varying kinds and qualities of fordite out there. "Fordite" is the common name for the overspray from the paint booths of old car factories. It originally came from Ford factories but the name has come to mean any recycled paint overspray. In the 1980's manufacturers switched to electrostatic sprays so there was no overspray, so it's VERY hard to come by! Here are some fordite cabs that I'll be listing tomorrow. The middle and two small ones on the right are original stock and the two on the left are "unbaked" more contemporary fordite from an unknown source. The "original stock" which is stuff that I collected in the 70's certainly came from old car factories whereas there is some kind of more recent to contemporary fordite that is "unbaked" and not as hard, brittle, and shiny as the old stuff. The more recent stuff does seem to show up in much larger chunks so I can do a little bit more creative things with it. I never really had access to any pieces of the "Classic" stuff that was big enough or stable enough to make beads. Here is my last piece of big rough of the more contemporary fordite....and here are some beads that I made out of this material....

I already sold the two smaller ones to a collector in Britain but the two larger ones are in my eBay store. I am 95% certain that the major seller of "faceted" fordite on eBay is using this rough material. I know he's having his faceting done in the Far East as I talked to him in Tucson.

I still actually really, really like working with the even more rare "boat paintite" variety of fordite. This is overspray of marine quality paint and it's very strong and takes a great polish! Here are some images of my "boat paintite"....

I'll be taking most of my inventory of beads with me away to a show in the middle of this week but I'll try and leave the cabs up in my eBay store. I'll probably have to put my Etsy store on vacation settings so I don't sell anything twice while I'm away, so if something is calling to you, better jump on it! I'll post more next week when I get back from my show and vacation. Thanks for looking everyone!

NPR story on Symbolic Thought, Beads, & Evolution

2010-08-09T18:43:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks! There was a really interesting story on NPR's "All Things Considered" today about symbolic thought that concludes with an explanation of how beads are the earliest examples of human symbolic thought, dating back 75,000+ years. I know that so many of us create our ornament with the intention of creating a symbolic thought, not just "another piece of ornament." At least that's the case for me with my lapidary work and stone beads that I make. I thought others in this forum might appreciate listening to or reading this story on the NPR website. Maybe it will push the evolution of your jewelry making up a notch or make you feel more connected to the human history of symbolic thought....

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129082962&sc=fb&cc=fp

Stone is ancestral and male...

2010-07-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

From a National Geographic article on Stonehenge, "In Malagasy culture the ancestors are revered with stone monuments, signifying the hardening of the bodies to bone and the enduring commemoration of death; wood, by contrast, which decays, is associated with transient life. Stone is ancestral and male, while wood,as Parker Pearson... put it, 'is soft and squishy, like women and babies.'" This makes me think a lot about my work, how it will last for millennia. I guess a lot of my work does say "ancestral and male"...! DISCUSS...

Green Zebra Jasper! (not a jasper!)

2010-07-01T13:39:00.000-07:00

A new material out of Brazil and I haven't seen ANY other lapidaries cutting this stuff! It's a green serpentine with vibrant white veins of chatoyant (cats eye) stripes! The few Chinese dealers selling it call it Green Zebra Jasper, but it's NOT a jasper. Very beautiful and unusual, but it's soft, so don't bang it ...around against hard surfaces. Cuts and polishes like butter!

Check out the listing in my eBay store GREEN ZEBRA TIGEREYE STONE!

Gemstone Skull Jewelry

2010-05-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

WOW! Dior has some HOT gemstone Skull Jewelry rich with diamonds and platinum. Very cool, by Victoire de Castellane. More images at the link. It's way out of my league, but I really appreciate it!

"Geologists: 'We May Be Slowly Running Out Of Rocks'"

2010-05-10T14:05:00.001-07:00

Hello to all the rock, gem, mineral, and stone appreciating people out there,

Nobody really loves rocks the way I love rocks. So after reading this article, "Geologists: 'We May Be Slowly Running Out Of Rocks'" online at America's Finest New Source, I felt compelled to share it with others who also care about rocks and our natural environment. Once you've read this article I'm sure you'll understand why we here at DVHdesigns always consider the natural life cycle of all rocks through every step of the lapidary refinery and stone upcycling process.

I want all customers of DVHdesigns to know that all of the rough rock that I work with in order to make my one of a kind, custom cut, gemstone bead pendants is 100% certifiable, free range rock that has been ethically harvested from it's mother lode and father formations. My solid rock gemstone pendants are then released via either my DVHdesigns eBay store or Etsy store using sustainable pricing. The unique, hand made, drill hole makes these upcycled rocks easily tagged, leashed, and able to be incorporated into human adornment, while never losing or diminishing their life cycle status as a genuine rock. The polished, matte, or natural finishes that are individually chosen for each of my stone beads increase their desirability to humans while not in any way hampering the stones ultimate return to it's rock flock of origin after the inevitable downfall of human civilization.

Here is a picture of the rock reconstitution and sedimentation process underway here at DVHdesigns. When possible we like to sun dry our rock sludge for a more organic evaporation process. The recycled plastic kitty litter bucket serves as a protective shell and a mold for the young sedimentary sludge. It will take only a few hundreds of years for the plastic bucket/boulder mold to naturally biodegrade and be reabsorbed into the mutant ecosystems of the future. By then the sedimentary sludge should be cured enough to be a stand alone rock! Under the proper conditions this bucket of ground up rock sludge will metamorph into an even harder and more solid stone. Meanwhile it can dream of day when it may mature to become a boulder, living it's natural life out once more as a free range rolling stone, gathering no moss, and never again to be taken for granite....

Like the concerned geologists & environmentalists mentioned in the article that I linked to above, a world without rocks is also my nightmare scenario! Thanks for letting me share and have a great day!

Cherry Volcano Quartz: did I go to far?

2010-04-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks, This is always a good topic to have a thread for and share with in the forums. I hope folks will feel comfortable asking questions and sharing information here about stones and how to accurately identify them as much as possible.

I'm curious what you all think about my response to a posting of "Cherry Volcano Quartz" that I just saw. I have a number of bead pendant dealers marked as favorites and get their newsletters. Today, which happens to be EARTH DAY, a vendor with the name "Earth_(something)_" in their userid, sent me an e-mail update of their new stuff. It's all inexpensive focal beads, mostly natural stone, and cut in China. On their new stuff page were multiple pieces of "Cherry Volcano Quartz". Since the vendor is a "top rated seller", based here in the US, with over a 1,000 listings and a feedback rating in the thousands, and she identifies her resin pieces as resin, I think it's safe to assume she knows that what she's selling as "Quartz" is pink and gold swirled glass....

Anyhow, it being Earth Day and everything, I got a little bee in my bonnet and sent the seller the following message,
"Hi Earth_(something)_, Happy Earth Day! The Earth asked me to to tell you that you must know very well that this Cherry Volcano Quartz and all the other pieces you have labeled as such is NOT quartz. It's glass. Don't you feel any shame listing this next to all the other natural stones of the Earth and intentionally mislabeling it as "quartz"? All the genuine quartz on Earth asked me to tell you that it's offended that you call yourselves Earth_(something)_ and you go around misrepresenting the stones of the Earth on eBay. I hope in the future you'll label things correctly. Thanks. I just had to get that off my chest or the Earth wouldn't let me sleep tonight. Have a nice day! Regards, David"

So my question is, did I go toooooo far in calling this vendor out on mislabeling her glass beads?

Also, feel free to ask questions and vent about mis-identified stones here!

Gemstone Identification and MISidentification...

2010-04-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

Howdy Folks, there is SO much out there in the gem & jewelry industry in the way of beautiful gemstones, as well as beautiful simulants, beautiful glass, beautiful resins, and much more to be used as adornment. I'm the first to admit that I can be a bit of a "rock snob". Yet I also really appreciate fabulous fakes. It's hard for the lay person and sometimes even the expert to tell the difference, between natural and man made or enhanced materials. I just wanted to start a thread where folks can ask questions and solicit informed feedback. It's often really hard to identify a stone by a picture, but some things are glaringly obvious. I'll start by sharing a few things...
MULTICOLOR or COLORED TURQUOISE: There is no such thing! A recent search brought up nearly 3,000 items on eBay and they are all either dyed howlite, dyed magnesite, or reconstituted powders and pigments that are mostly resin. Anything you see that is multicolored and striped is absolutely manufactured. Colbaugh Processing in Kingman, Arizona is a major American stabilizer & reconstituter of natural turquoises. About a decade ago they came up with a meterial they call "Rainbow Calsilica" which is very similiar. I have cut this material and I have seen the "multicolor turquoise" beads. While they may have genuine ground up rock IN the mix, most of the material is stabilizing resin and colored dyes or pigments. Turquoise does NOT come in purple, or white, or orange, or bright greens, or chartreuse, or any other color other than shades of light blues, sky blues, and blue greens. Natural untreated turquoise may absorb bodily oils over time and become quite greenish in color, but they won't "scream" green!
CHERRY QUARTZ: It's pink included glass made in China.
GREEN AMETHYST: Amethyst is quartz with enough iron present to make it ANY shade of lavendar to purple. If the quartz is green, it CANNOT be called amethyst. The correct name for Green Amethyst is PRASIOLITE.
GOLDSTONE: A beautiful glass that is made with copper crystals precipitated in the glass. Developed by Italian glass makers hundreds of years ago and hard to make! I really appreciate goldstone and it used to be hard to get, but now the Chinese seem to have cracked the production code and there is quite a bit of it available. It comes in brown, blue (which is deep blue to purplish) and occassionally a deep green. The Italian word for goldstone is aventurrina. Here's a great link for the history of goldstone.

That's it for now! More to follow....

535 ct Emerald Bead: Incredible Hulk, or Greenman?

2010-04-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks, a quick QUIZ!!! Does this solid emerald crystal bead look more like the face of the INCREDIBLE HULK, or more like the face of the GREENMAN?

Genuine emerald! A fusion of several massive, specimen grade, crystals. I'm not sure if the rough is from Colombia or Brazil, as I bought the rough in Tucson from an Indian dealer (dot, not feather). I saw a face in it right away and didn't want to do too much to enhance this piece other than to polish the face on half the front and then polish half the edges and all the back. A very interesting piece. I'm curious if others see the Incredible Hulk, or if they see a Greenman, or they just think I'm crazier than ever....

Here's the back...

A great green color for Spring and this is the Birthstone for MAY! Thanks for letting me share!

Some More Sonora Sunrise!

2010-03-31T18:51:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks! Thanks for all the lovely comments! I haven't really been so excited about any particular stone like this in a long time! I've heard so much about Pantone declaring Turquoise to be the color of the year, and I was disappointed that I didn't get much turquoise rough when I was in Tucson this year, but the Sonora Sunrise is really making up for it! The rich turquoise color of the chrysocolla-brochantite is so stunning next to the brilliant brick red orange of the cuprite! What I really like is that the colors almost seem SUPERnatural, and yet this material is totally natural and untreated! 90% of the turquoise out there is stabilized or treated in some way, so to find such a dramatically beautiful gemstone material as this, that has natural colors and is strong enough to not need any kind of treatment, is really a special find!

I have used most of the rest of the 4 pound chunk that I've been working on making these larger beads, but I have been successful in finding a good source to get additional rough, so I JUST bought another 14 pounds of this phenomenal rough and I promise that I will also make some smaller bead pendants and some cabs that are less expensive.

I REALLY like this piece that I sold this week to a collector and jewelry designer in Scotland. It's a large tongue shape to be set in jewelry (no holes)

and I'm quite fond of this little inverted kite shaped pendant bead that is in my eBay store...

Once I get the extra rough I'll cut up some cabochons and share pics of those! I do have a few cabs in the store and trust me, with 14 pounds of this juicy stuff on the way, I promise there will be more. Here's one of the cabs that is already up, a high dome teardrop and sometimes the cuprite has some wonderful smaller patterns within the rich orange red color, as this teardrop bead shows..

I'm geeked about cutting more of this stuff! Thanks for letting me share with y'all!

"Sonora Sunrise" Chrysocolla & Cuprite

2010-03-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

I made these wonderful bead pendants and cabochons using a beautiful and striking stone called "Sonora Sunrise" that has only been on the market since around 2007. It is a mixture of wonderful turquoise colored, sky blue chrysocolla, firey orange-red cuprite, with black veins of tenorite. There are sometimes little dots of green that I believe to be brochantite and one dealer seems to claim that the massive blue is colored by brochantite. Chrysocolla can form after brochantite. They are ALL copper minerals, so who know's how God/dess's spun them together at their moment of creation! The result is totally natural and super striking. Mined in Sonora, Mexico. I've never seen anyone else cut beads out of this stuff! Compare with other pieces on eBay and the internet and you'll see that DVHdesigns cut Sonora Sunrise stands out from the rest! Chrysocolla is often mistaken for a kind of turquoise. They are both secondary minerals that form after copper in various ways.

Here's a close up of one of the stones, a large shield shaped focal bead that's currently in my eBay store...

Here's some information on the chrysocolla part of the stone that I easily found on the internet....
"Chrysocolla (hydrated copper silicate) is a mineral, (Cu,Al)2H2Si2O5(OH)4·nH2O. It is of secondary origin and forms in the oxidation zones of copper ore bodies. Associated minerals are quartz, limonite, azurite, malachite, cuprite, and other secondary copper minerals.....Chrysocolla has an attractive blue-green colour and is a minor ore of copper, having a hardness of 2.5 to 3.5. It is also used as an ornamental stone. It is typically found as glassy botryoidal or rounded masses and crusts, or vein fillings. Because of its light color, it is sometimes confused with turquoise. Commonly it occurs only as pourous crusts unsuitable for gem use, but high quality, gem grade chrysocolla can be translucent and is highly prized.....The name comes from the Greek chrysos, "gold", and kolla, "glue", in allusion to the name of the material used to solder gold, and was first used by Theophrastus in 315 BCE." For metaphysical information on Chrysocolla, I have found this website for Shimmerlings to be a good resource, with a variety of information and the sources cited.

Here's some information on the cuprite part that I also found online about cuprite... "Cuprite is an oxide mineral composed of copper(I) oxide Cu2O, and is a minor ore of copper.....It is a secondary mineral which forms in the oxidized zone of copper sulfide deposits. It frequently occurs in association with native copper, azurite, chrysocolla, malachite, tenorite and a variety of iron oxide minerals. It is known as ruby copper due to its distinctive red color....Cuprite was first described in 1845 and the name derives from the Latin cuprum for its copper content." Metaphysically Cuprite is said to "stimulate the base chakra while providing a grounding affect on the whole body. It can increase physical vitality and energy. It is a survival tool, attracting that which can satisfy ones physical needs...also used to alleviate worry..."

The black tenorite is also a copper oxide mineral and has it's own metaphysical properties, but I'll let you research that one yourself!

Here's a pic of the rest of the rough I have and that I'm getting ready to cut. This is all the rough I have at the moment, although I hope to get some more. When I was in Tucson at the gem shows I searched through over 500 pounds of this rough to hand pick out one 4 pound chunk to work with! For the sake of scale, that dirty black nob on the right is about the size of a silver dollar. I hope to get a bunch more of this cut and listed over the next few days...

Thanks for checking out my newest offerings!

Mens Jewelry, stuff you make for the guys!

2010-03-15T18:45:00.000-07:00

Hey Folks! On another jewelry forum that I'm on someone started a thread for folks to share and discuss jewelry designed for men or jewelry that has a more masculine look. I thought it would be an interesting thread to start and share with here as well. I'd love to see pieces that folks have made just for a man or that they feel men would be comfortable wearing. Also, is there anyone out there who makes jewelry JUST for men or has a significant percentage of their buyers who are men? Love to hear your feedback as well.

I must confess that amongst, shall I say, "MY people", we are not so prone to assigning a gender to our jewelry. I certainly understand the dominant gender paradigms in jewelry and fashion design but I have always been a strong advocate of subverting the dominant paradigm! That being said, most men, myself included, DO hue to more traditional norms when it comes to ornament. For example, I DO own a very nice, high quality, rhinestone tiara, but I seldom wear it out in public. I mostly wear focal beads that I make myself and I think my work is very elemental and gender neutral.

It's interesting how social norms have changed around men and jewelry, just in my lifetime. In the 60's & 70's it was ok and popular for younger men to wear chains and beads, but any ear piercing was still seen as pretty gay, and most men older than 30 seemed to be more conservative, sticking to strickly "manly" rings (wedding band, class ring, military, signet rings) and tie bars or tie tacs. Men of my father's age and certain geographic locales might wear a bolo tie.

To me, it seemed by the 1980's men's jewelry had practically gone underground, except for the men's "Single Earring". During the 80's and the Mtv generation a lot of guys started to wear a single earring in their LEFT ear. During this time period the fashion phrase for a man who wanted to get his ear pierced was "LEFT IS RIGHT AND RIGHT IS WRONG." According to this credo, a man with his left ear pierced was a heterosexual (or closeted) and a man with only his right ear pierced was a homosexual. A guy could get multiple piercings in his left ear, but if he went to the right side people got even more suspicious. I got my left ear pierced in the 80's and suffered a lot of homophobic slurs even though I had pierced the "Straight guy" ear. In the late 80's I came out of the closet and got my other ear pierced and started wearing matched pairs of surgical steel big hoop earrings. For me it was a political act as much as a fashion statement.

By the 90's it was ok for straight guys to get both ears pierced and then EVERYBODY started piercing EVERYTHING! The piercing craze certainly has done a LOT to increase the number of all kinds of men wearing jewelry, or at least men wearing piercing jewelry. I think it's interesting that so much of what is accepted as fashionable amongst "men's jewelry" is the sort of "Modern Primitive" look that accompanies piercing jewelry. I mean, here in Portland, Oregon where I live there are LOTS of mostly straight men who have LOTS of piercing jewelry, plugs, and stretched ear lobes. However when I'm in Tucson at the big trade shows for the jewelry industry, it becomes clear that jewelry for men is an extremely teeny tiny portion of the jewelry trade.

All in all I would just like to see more men being more comfortable wearing more jewelry to accessorize themselves. Heck, since we're so firnly in the age of cell phones many men have even stopped wearing a wrist watch, which for most of the 20th century was the epitome of men's jewelry fashion. Anyhow, enough of my babbling on. I'll share a couple of pics of my beads that I think ANY man would feel comfortable wearing as a traditionally masculine look.

When men wear necklaces they're much more likely to wear a single pendant on a chain than they are to wear something with multiply strung beads and that pendant is more apt to be a straightforward design or linear shape as opposed to something too curvy and patterned. Also, most men can't wear as short of a chain as a woman can wear (chokers interfere with adams apples) and I don't think a really LONG necklace works out to be very masculine either. Personally I think 18 to 24" is the ideal length for a man's necklace with the length depending on the shirt he's wearing!

I make a lot of my beads in a classical "shield" shape which I think lends itself to masculine imagery. This shield shaped bead is made out of a high grade copper ore from the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan's UP. It's dark with dark green epidote inclusions and splotches of shiny pure copper....

while this rare Tanzanian Iolite Sunstone bead does have sparkles in it, the watery blue color, the internal fractures, and the linear, curved rectangular shape give it a masculine edge and it would look nice alone on a chain.

Another shape that I do that I think reads well as a more "masculine" shaped pendant shape is what I call a "Wedge Shape". This wedge shaped bead is made out of rare 250 million year old petrified tree fern from Brazil...

That's it for now! I look forward to seeing more jewelry stuff for the GUYS!

Keweenaw Copper Ore Beads

2010-03-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

Hi all, when I was in Tucson and Quartzite last month at the big gem & mineral shows I picked up a nice variety of Michigan Keweenaw copper ores! I love the diversity of the ways that the ore forms. The patterns and matrix colors are so unique, and the copper has such a powerful, energetic, and elemental feel to it. I only got a few pieces, most about the size of a lemon, but each one has very different patterns and matrix. Each stone will only yield a few bead sized pieces, and drilling through the solid copper bits is hard. This copper is up to 5% silver and that little extra silver makes this copper more conductive than your average copper. It;'s Keweenaw copper that was used to make the US TELEGRAPH system in the 19th century, and then the TELEPHONE and ELECTRIC MOTOR industry in this country! While Keweenaw had the purest copper deposits in the world, they weren't the biggest and most of the mines were closed by the late 1960's. This copper tells a story...

These two pieces show copper that seems to have crystallized in place. While there are some blobs, there is also a latticelike pattern in the copper. I believe that the green matrix may be epidote. Only got these two beads out of this piece of rough...

Then there's another piece that has lots of spots in the dark matrix, with globs of copper. It's hard to capture the reflections off the copper in the photo, but they are spread throughout the stone...

and this piece has a nice little vein clearly running through it....

Thanks for letting me share. Back to the wheels, I'm finishing up some Mexican Fire Agate beads....

Turquoise Hearts!!!

2010-03-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

Hi Folks! I'm still having my heART attack. I just made these three hearts out of turquoise. This smaller one is mostly nuggety and natural that is just buffed up. I worked with the natural shape and smoothed out the lobes....

This second one is symmetrical and polished all around. Also with a 3mm drill hole...

This large one is left sort of "nuggety" on parts and smooth and polished over the rest of it. 3mm drill hole through the lobe....

Turquoise is easy to polish. Nuggets can just be lightly tumbled in 600 grit overnight and then buffed with a muslin buff using Zam or Fabulustre, which will take it to a high polish.
When I was in Tucson at the big Gem & Mineral shows in February of 2010 I picked up a nice little batch of some turquoise to work with! This material is real turquoise from China that has been stabilized, which means that it has been hardened with a clear plastic resin that does not change the color. Most people don't know that about 90% of the turqoise mined in the world is a kind of turquoise "chalk" and the vast majority of that material HAS to be stabilized or treated in some way so that it can be worked into jewelry or beads. Natural turquoise that has not been treated and is stable enough to cut is rather rare and quite expensive. Untreated turquoise can absorb a person's body oils and turn green over time. Even an accomplished lapidary can't necessarily tell natural turquoise from treated turquoise once it's cut.

Turquoise has been one of the most popular gemstones throughout history, prized by every culture from the Egyptians (who made faience as a kind of imitation turquoise), to the Persians, to the Tibetans, to the Native Americans. The color experts at Pantone, have declared Turquoise to be the Color of the Year for 2010! Check them out for more info on the use of the color turquoise in fashion and design this year!

Here are the classifications of different kinds of turquoise. Natural: is material that can be cut and polished with no treatment. Stabilized: is material that has been hardened with a clear plastic that has not altered the color. Treated: is turquoise that has been hardened with resin that has been color dyed. Reconstructed: turquoise had had it's shape altered such as being ground up and pressed into a shape using resins and dyes. Imitation: is manmade (such as plastic) or natural product (such as howlite or magnesite) that has been made to imitate natural turquoise.

Thanks for looking and I'm currently working on hearts in kona dolomite, pyrite, dino bone, and serpentine...

Regards, David @DVHdesigns

Rhodochrosite Heart Bead

2010-02-24T15:51:00.000-08:00

I hand cut this focal bead which measures 59x34mm and is 13mm thick with a 3mm drill hole. A Heart shape with a nice polish. It shows some great contrasting pink colors and banding. A really nice piece that would look great worked into a creative piece of art jewelry!

This magical material is from Argentina, probably from San Luis or Capillitas. It is difficult to get good cutting rough because the government owns the mines and limits production. While Rhodochrosite has a hardness of only 4 it is much loved for its distinctive color and patterning. It is not easily mistaken for any other stone. The Incas believed that rhodochrosite is the blood of their former rulers, turned to stone, therefore it is sometimes called "Rosa del Inca" or "Inca Rose". Rhodochrosite is formed in low temperature hydrothermal veins in ore deposits of silver, lead, zinc, and copper and also in sedimentary manganese deposits. Rhodochrosite was one of the first stones I ever cut and I made many lovely cabochons out of it back when I was in Middle School in Jackson, Michigan. I made a lovely pendant for my Nana and all her friends admired it so much that I made and sold a bunch to her friends. Luckily none were as nice as the first one I made for Nana!

I was fortunate to get one decent sized chunk of mid grade lapidary material when I was in Tucson along with some smaller pieces with drusy galena on them! I look forward to cutting more of this lovely material.

The Crystal Awareness Guide by the Legion of Light has this to say about Rhodochrosite, "Aids spleen, heart, kidneys, and pituitary gland and circulation of blood. Enhances memory and intellectual power. Emotional balance. Helps heal emotional wounds and traumas. Aligns subtle bodies. Red/Pink color helps to blend courage/will/passion aspects of lower chakras with loving expression of the heart. Divine love, acceptance of self and life. Powerful healer for those attuned to the stone. Chakras: root, heart."

Check out my eBay store for more cool one of a kind, custom cut, gemstone beads!

The Military Dog Tag Project

2009-12-22T14:45:00.000-08:00

Matthew 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God

Howdy Folks, over the past several years I've sporadically made a number of bead-dangles that are a part of what I call my "Dog Tag Series". The shapes are simple and based on the shape of the classic military dog tag that soldiers wear. I mostly make them out of jet, which is a traditional mourning jewel to help folks, especially members of the military, veterans, and their families deal with their grief, but I've made them out of all different kinds of stones, including lapis lazuli.

For me it's a kind of reclaiming of a symbol. The military dog tags represent an individual soldiers identity and their place in the military. My stone dog tags are made with diverse material that come from all around the Earth and are made directly from the Earth itself. They don't have any other identifying characteristics other than the elemental "source" from which they come. My intention is for these dog tags to serve as reminders and mementos to all those who perish in military conflicts and those affected by these tragedies. I've come to a point in my life where I don't want to just be someone who is simply politically "Anti-War" but rather someone who is actively "Pro-Peace" and does something about it other than simply demand to bring the troops home and stop fighting. It's not realistic. I was also quite impressed by President Obama's acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.

For that reason, out of all the dog tags I'm making and listing in my DVHdesigns eBay Store, 25% of the gross sales price will either go to Mercy Corps, a Portland, Oregon based non-profit doing sustainable aid and education in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and around the world, or 25% will go to American Combat Veterans of War, a San Diego based all volunteer group which "is a nonprofit organization that recruits combat veteran volunteers to mentor, coach and assist our warriors suffering from combat stress, allowing them and their families to lead productive and fulfilling lives." I know it's not much, but at least I feel like I'm doing something to help the poor people throughout the world who live in situations that foster conflicts, and I'm also reaching out to those American soldiers who come home so traumatized by their participation in those conflicts which they had no part in creating.

I've recently started a larger series of these dog tags specifically in jet, to help those greived everywhere by the loss of life from military action, as well as making more and more in lapis lazuli for those interested in and affected by the Afghanistan conflict, also known as Operation Enduring Freedom.

Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted

Each jet dog tag bead is hand made by me here in my studio in Portland, OR. On these pieces I used Russian jet from near Lake Baikal, which is just north of Mongolia and NE of Afghanistan. While I support our intervention in Afghanistan and pray for a peaceful outcome, I am grieved by the whole long bloody conflict, from the time of the Russian invasion in 1979 until now, 30 years later. I make these jet dog tags in memory of all the soldiers and all their families, in all countries, affected by not only this long and tragic conflict, but also in memory of all those who died in the violent wars and conflicts of the past century.

Here is a selection of dog tags and mini dog tag charms that I've made in lapis lazuli...

Lapis Lazuli has been mined in Afghanistan for 6,000 years. It was used by the Egyptians for everything from jewelry, to eye shadow, to blue paint. In fact, up until the early 1800's, almost all the blue paint in the world was made with ground lapis pigment. I have left these particular pieces with a satinny matte finish. The stone feels different when one touches it without a layer of polish between the wearer and the stone. I think these would make a wonderful gift for a soldier who is or has been deployed to Afghanistan, for one of their family members or friends, or for any individual who cares about the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan. It can serve as a kind of "touchstone", letting the wearer feel a little piece of Afghanistan as they pray for peace in the region.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading and I appreciate your thoughts, prayers, feedback, and support as I continue this project.

Recycled Art Glass & Obsidian

2009-12-07T20:45:00.001-08:00

Hi all, I just did another batch of the recycled art glass beads. Here's a group shot of the pieces that I just got finished and listed. I like the frosty clarity and all the different widths and colors that arch through the beads.

I've also cut some more "baby snowflake" obsidian and I'm particularly fond of this bead that I just put in my eBay store as well...

Someone asked if the snowflakes were caused by "ash" in the obsidian. The official explanation for the cause of the "snowflakes" and other features of obsidian is as follows...(info pulled from the internet).....
"Obsidian is mineral-like, but not a true mineral because as a glass it is not crystalline; in addition, its composition is too complex to comprise a single mineral. It is sometimes classified as a mineraloid. Though obsidian is dark in color similar to mafic rocks such as basalt, obsidian's composition is extremely felsic. Obsidian consists mainly of SiO2 (silicon dioxide), usually 70% or more.....Pure obsidian is usually dark in appearance, though the color varies depending on the presence of impurities. Iron and magnesium typically give the obsidian a dark green to brown to black color. A very few samples are nearly colorless. In some stones, the inclusion of small, white, radially clustered crystals of cristobalite in the black glass produce a blotchy or snowflake pattern (snowflake obsidian). It may contain patterns of gas bubbles remaining from the lava flow, aligned along layers created as the molten rock was flowing before being cooled. These bubbles can produce interesting effects such as a golden sheen (sheen obsidian) or a rainbow sheen (rainbow obsidian)."

I recently got THREE disks of trafficlightite off of eBay, so sometime in the next week or two I'll be working on sets of red, yellow, and green beads! Stay tuned and I'll keep ya posted.
It is COLD here in Portland! 25 degrees and it feels like 12. Even though my studio is pretty well insulated and heated, it's hard to get it over 60 degrees in here andmy hands get pretty cold working in water all the time. At least we're having sunny days. Well thanks for letting me share! Back to the grind...

Return of Bowlerite! With a GRAPE FLAVOR!

2009-11-21T17:19:00.001-08:00

Howdy DVHdesigns Fans!

I've been back to cutting bowlerite! I just did the Portland Bead Society Bead Bazaar two weekends ago. The show is great and I LOVE the PBS, but sales were certainly off. Of course they were for everyone and I've heard that most bead shows are way off this year for most people. However, out of all the things I DID sell, 80% of my sales were BOWLERITE! I'm pretty well know for cutting this stuff and when people see it on my table they always stop, handle it, and smile when they hear what it is! Here's some group pics of stuff I just put up in my eBay store, freeform focals in lots of different colors...

and here's some new hearts I just did....

The really crazy thing, is that I made two heart beads out of a REALLY RARE kind of bowlerite sphere. I got one purple and teal swirled ball about two years ago and it SMELLED different from the other bowlerite I was cutting! At first I thought I was having olfacatory flashbacks, or maybe there was just something different in the resin. Well when I realized the faint smell persisted AFTER I had finished cutting them, I had some friends smell them, and they finally helped me realize that they smelled like artificial GRAPE (like soda, dum-dum lollipops, or gum that has that "purple grape" flavor or smell). Well I looked on the internet (of course!) and found out that Storm bowling ball manufactures has a whole LINE of scented balls! They've tried over 100 "flavors" and grape was the first one! They even tried a scented one, that they said stunk! The article in the link above is pretty funny! Anyhow, here are two grape scented hearts made out of the same ball... Pretty bizarre, huh?

That's it for now folks! In case anyone's interested I'm having a 30% off sale on most stone beads in my eBay store this week and I have 99 cent, no reserve, auctions closing tomorrow evening, Sunday. Happy Thanksgiving week!

Sunstone Moonstone Hybrid from Tanzania

2009-11-18T21:25:00.000-08:00

Above, we see this particular variety of sunstone shows a moonstone effect on the opposing axes of the sunstone, almost like a sun and moon hybrid!
This is a new, spectacular gemmy sunstone material from Tanzania that is as good or better than the more commonly found sunstone from India. I hand cut this shield shaped bead which measures 40x27mm and is 12mm thick with a 3mm drill hole. It has a high polished finish. There are several healed fractures in this bead, but they don't threaten the structural integrity of the stone. The adularescent AND aventurescent qualities of this stone are just stunning! The images give you just a hint of how these well oriented stones go from coppery orange base color to a nearly blinding coppery whitish brilliance! White veining and some dark grey spots create an ethereal & spacey effect!

Here is what June Culp Zeitner of Lapidary Journal fame says about sunstone in her book, "Gem and Lapidary Materials,".... "Sunstone is an aventurescent labradorite, microcline, or oligoclase feldspar, distinguished by minute hematite or goethite inclusions which reflect the light" She goes on to say that some microcline sunstones like this one show both aventurescence and adularescence.

Some of the mystic lore that has been said about sunstone is that it is a stone of leadership, dispels fear and stress, increases vitality, encourages independence and originality, warms the spirit and brings good fortune!

Iloite Sunstone

2009-11-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

A wonderful deep blue iolite with silvery rainbows of "meteors" flashing through it as it moves in the light! I hand cut this elongated teardrop shaped piece which measures 51x17mm, is 8mm thick with a 2.5mm drill hole and has a weight of 54cts. It has a polished finish all over. The stone is cut so that the orientation of the optical phenomena are at their maximum. Still images don't do this amazing and hard to find gemstone justice. The stone really has to be moved around in the light to get the full optical effects of the aventurescence, chatoyancy, and iris effect that are all present in this remarkable stone!
This material is called "Bloodshot Iolite". It is an odd variety of iolite, a magnesium aluminum silicate, that has inclusions of small flat platelets of reddish hematite or goethite. This creates the optical phenomena of adventurescence throughout the stone. It is the same mineral and optical effect found in feldspars that are sunstones, so this is also accurately referred to as "sunstone in iolite". Iolite is noted for it's pleasing blue color and is often mistaken for sapphire or tanzanite, which are both much more expensive. Most iolite has inclusions and in these stones that I have cut the internal inclusions also create "iris effect" which are little refracted rainbows within the stone. I have never seen ANY of this rough available before my last trip to the World's gem & mineral trade shows in Tucson this last February. I saw ONE dealer who had this rough and I bought his 8 nicest pieces, which yielded only about a dozen pieces and I only have 4 left in my eBay store. That is all I have EVER seen of the rough and if you look around you won't find any other loose beads or custom cut cabs out of this material.

Copper ore & metal mineral beads & cabs

2009-09-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

Howdy DVHdesigns Fans,

I've been on a bit of a spree around metal minerals recently! I grew up in a rock club in Michigan and there were always crazy bits of high grade metal mineral ores from the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan's Upper Peninsula passed around amongst the rockhounds and we went there once to collect on the mine dumps. As an adult and professional lapidary, I've delved deeper into working withmetal minerals and ores. There's an aspect of alchemy in it for me, taking the base metal and without smelting it, recreating it into something that has more value than the metals contained within. It's also neat to see, cut, and feel the density and intensity of the rocks and ores from which we get the metals necessary to modern life.

In some materials like the native copper, the veins of copper are from the purest deposits on Earth and native peoples were able to use and fashion this metal over 6,000 years ago. It was traded from the original deposits in the U.P. down the Mississippi and ancient Native American copper artifacts have been found as far away as Alabama. I made this bead out of a material called Kingston Conglomerate. It's like a natural concrete of brown and green stones with solid, dense veins of nearly pure copper running all through it like spiderwebs! Because the metal is so reflective it's a challenge to get it to show up in the image, but all the bronze-brown-shiny webbing in this bead is native copper...

My brother knows of my passion for metal minerals so I got a box of nice, exotic, rough ores for my birthday! By far the best was the high grade silver ore from Sudbury, Ontario. 1.4 billion years ago (right around the time the first fungal and bacterial life forms appeared on Earth), a giant meteroite slammed into the area of Canada just north of Lake Superior. The intense heat fused the metals in the Earth's crust together in this region creating one of the most metal ore rich areas on Earth. There was probably also a lot of iron and nickle in the meteorite that were mixed in. These beads and cabs were made from a high grade silver ore from that area. The ore is mixed with bits of cobalt, nickle, and other metals, but very close examination of the crystalline structures of the metal oxides along with drill testing revealed that this ore is more silver than the other metals. Unlike the cobalt ore, my drill bit actually encounters solid bits of silver metal while drilling these...

I also got a very intersting chunk of pyrite-marcasite that is heavily silicated (mixed in with and turned to quartz). Pyrite & Marcasite are about the same thing, mostly iron and sulfur, and were mined more for the sulfur content than the iron. Although it's shiny and golden metallic looking (commonly called "fools gold"), it can be very brittle in it's pure or more crystalline state. What's great about the piece I got is that the silication makes it very strong and stable with great bronzey and black variegation. This material is from Australia and I just got one piece of it, so don't know if more is available. I haven't seen it in suitable lapidary form like this before!

I'll conclude with Psilomelane, a manganese oxide, and the material I cut is usually heavily silicated. This lovely piece of dendritic psilomelane in chalcedony (quartz) with fine drusy quartz crystals at the top. This material is MOSTLY quartz, but the black dendrites of psilomelane are mostly a manganese oxide. It comes from N. Mexico but the few hobby mines that produced it have closed. Manganese is used to make alloys of steel and aluminum that are stronger and more resistant to oxidation (rust).

and this piece of psilomelane mixed with white agate. This second piece is probably from Northern Mexico. The manganese can make the chalcedony and agate EXTRA hard and very challenging to drill!

Thanks for looking! I'll return to metal minerals soon, although I'm probably going to be cutting mostly jet and soft things for awhile.

P.S. I'm also having a 30% off inventory clearance in my eBay store!

Petrifed Wood, Dino Bone & "The Tree of Life" Series of DVH beads

2009-06-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

I recently attended a Spirit Dance where for 5 days we did ceremony, prayers, and dance in a circle around a tree that represented "The Tree of Life." One of the things I took away from the dance was the notion that I need to keep dancing around that tree in my everyday life, and what better "Tree of Life" to dance around than the petrified wood here in my studio! Thus begins the "The Tree of Life" series of petrified wood beads from DVHdesigns. I also consider other petrified organic matter, such as petrified dinosaur bone, algae, coprolites, etc. to be a part of the "The Tree of Life" so I'll also share those here. While looking into and studying rocks as I cut them, I have a strong sense of "looking back in time" at a snapshot of the earths creation, from an era before and during the long evolution of life here on this planet. When working with petrified fossils of organic matter, that glimpse into "geological time" takes on all new levels of meaning and connection for me.
If you're interested in the metaphysical aspects of petrified wood, here is some info I got off the internet and from Melody's book, "Love is in the Earth"; because it is silicated, or turned to quartz, it also has the metaphysical properties of quartz and other forms of quartz such as chalcedony or agate. Petrified wood is a stone that is good for grounding and stabilizing one's emotions. It is particularly useful in calming survival-based fears. Provides support for those going through a crisis period of dis-ease, acts as a stone of transformation to help one advance in life to appropriate chosen levels. It helps one be practical. It is a stone of business success. Petrified wood is a good stone for general protection. Physically, it is beneficial physically for the bones, backaches, skin and hair. Petrified wood is also used for past life regressions because of its inherent link with the past.
Here is an example of Opalized Wood from Washington.

This wood didn't petrify into hard silicated, quartz material, like most petrified woods. Instead it turned into a form of opal (common, not fire), which is also silica, but with a different and larger molecular structure, making it more brittle and challenging to work with than regular petrified wood. I wood treat opalized wood like a big glass or porcelain bead, as opposed to a regular "rock" or "stone" bead. and this "heart of stone" is also an opalized "wooden heart"

These next two are petrified palm wood found near the border of Texas & Louisiana. This wood is a rare and very desirable material among North American lapidaries. This first little wedge bead is the more common color and patterning, which ranges from various shades of beige and tan with the spots in darker complimentary colors. The dots are the vertical cellular structure of the palm tree trunk (if cut sideways one gets wispy lines, not quite as dramatic). In this first piece there is a little cluster of cells that didn't fully agatize and one of them goes all the way through the bead. I centered that hole in the lower part when I cut it so that the hole could be used as a place to seed bead through onto either side, as a beading station, or it could be used to attach some other small embellisment by a jeweler.

This larger wedge bead is also petrified palm from the same region, but the center of the trunk of the tree was affected by some kind of sulfur compounds during it's petrification, turning it black but leaving the outer region with the tan color. One can still see the dots in the blackness. These bi-color black & tan pieces of palm are highly prized finds for a cutter. I've never seen anyone else make beads out of them. I only have one chunk of this material that I scored in Tucson last year. I try to balance the colors in one piece, creating a truly yin-yang, heaven & earth, light & dark, two spirit kind of effect. I'll have to be sure to save one of these for myself at some point as I can probably only make another half dozen "black & tans" with the material I have left...

I guess I can't get y'all excited by mentioning dino bone without showing ya some, so here's a nice petrified dinosaur bone made with a piece collected from the Colorado plateau. This has a nice earthy, brick red color and the patterns of cell structure of the marrow of the bone are noticeable. Dino bone is more highly prized when there is more contrast between the colors of the cell structure and wall, with black and brick red highly regarded. I love that if one looks close, this dino bone heart has a small healed fracture in it too. Another one for my Broken Hearts Club Band....
That's all for now folks. Thanks for letting me share. Time to get back to the grind. There's some sycamore & 260 million year old tree fern asking me to dance....

2009-03-12T23:15:00.001-07:00

Hey Bead Lovers! Here's some lovely pieces I made out of new material I got when I was in Tucson last month. I got one chunk of this material called Sonora Sunrise from Sonora, Mexico. It's a beautful sky blue chrysocolla with firey red cuprite and I believe that the black is tenorite. They are all secondary minerals after copper. I only got three beads out of the one fist sized chunk of rough I got and these are the two big dramatic ones... I picked up a pound of massive kyanite crystals from Tanzania and cut these two pieces. The dealer is a German fellow who is from near Idar Oberstein and deals only in Tanzanian gemstones. I really love the cats eye effect and schiller that make these appear like a blue gray lightning captured in stone...

and I got this super adulaurescent sunstone from Tanzania from the same dealer. If one looks at the edge of this sunstone bead there is a moonstone effect on the side, sort of like a sunstone-moonstone hybrid!

. That's it for now. I'm cutting quite a few new things so more to come!

New grindings, returned from Tucson...

2009-02-20T16:31:00.000-08:00

Hey all, made it home from Tucson and the annual hajj to Gemstone Mecca! Finally settling back into the studio and breaking in some INCREDIBLE new diamond wheels, playing with new treasures, and breaking out some old treasures that were too hard for me to cut with my old worn wheels. It's such a wonderful feeling to have a really, really hard jasper or agate just melt underneath your fingers as you bring the shape out of the stone. Good diamonds are a lapidary artists best friend....

My new grindings from February 19th. First rough grind on my new, rock devouring, 60 grit, 8"x2" diamond grinding wheel, Sachi. I named her after the company from India she came from. That's Sachi on the left. She's a realllllly good girl and was a SWEET deal! She chewed up all those stones in no time and those were some hard puppies, I picked them out special to break her in and test her out. Front row, L to R, Gem Chrysocolla (not turquoise), Indonesian Purple Seam Agate, two Willow Creeks (yes, both the maroon and the ivory one came from the same mine in Idaho), Indonesian Lace Agate, Aussie Tigerye, Texas Petrified Palm Wood, Sudbury Shiny Cobalt Ore (some silver & arsenic mixed in, for sure), and the oval at the end is an Brazilian Oco Agate geode filled with sparkling drusy quartz crystals. All will be bead focal pendants. The second row is more stuff! This is just the first stage, rough cut. They need at least another grinding at 120 grit, then sandings at 120, 220, 600, 1200, 3000 grits and THEN a polish.... cutting rocks is hard.

Lapidary Journal profile of DVHdesigns, 12/95

2009-01-20T20:55:00.000-08:00

I thought this would be a good place to post some articles that have been written about me and my work. Here is a profile that Lapidary Journal did on me back in December 1995. Click on any of the pages to enlarge them to read.

Moonstone memories....

2008-12-15T17:35:00.000-08:00

Howdy all. Time for me to start blogging about my work. Friday night was the biggest full moon of the year, and as I wasn't going to a full moon heart circle, I stayed in the studio and did my own moon ritual. I worked on some Norwegian Moonstone (also known as Blue Pearl Granite or Larvakite). I got it from the backyard rock pile of my beloved, Ti, as he was packing to move. I really love the way this large lingam turned out and the silvery blue flashes in this material have always been a favorite.

I moved on and did some classic moonstone from India as well. This large teardrop shaped bead has great orientation and adularescence! There are some internal healed fractures, but it is completely stable and quite a brilliant piece! I also have some green moonstones in process, but my motor on my special lapidary grinder broke down and I can't finish them! Argh! Anyhow, here is the silver grey moonstone bead....

I had one very special piece of bowlerite that has a rare, perfectly round, pure white inclusion in it, very evocative of our giant full moon! So I made a red bowlerite full moon heart out of it!

Finally, I took a piece of computer hard drive, labratory grown, silicon that was from a massive broken silicon cyclinder reject, and made this sort of "broken crescent winter moon" from it! The perfect gift for the computer geek!
Ok, I'm starting to get the hang of this. Please feel free to visit my eBay store, DVHdesigns!