Getting Ready - Urchins

Part of my upcoming collection of nature-inspired jewellery - beautiful sea urchins, made entirely from fine silver , with a choice of precious gemstone in the centre.  The one pictured contains a gleaming blue natural zircon.  Stunning.

Getting Ready - the Sapphire Lotus

I plan to have more of the very gorgeous and very popular Sapphire Lotus series - each fine silver flower holds a brilliant 3.5mm padparadscha sapphire.  Very sparkly and very very special.

A Gorgeous New Ring

I loved doing this special commission that was the birthday present for a beautiful girl from her mum.  It is hand forged sterling silver, with a tube-set green sapphire.  Difficult to tell from this picture but the ring was v-shaped at the shoulders to show off more of the stone.  Gorgeous and sparkly.

Demantoid Garnet

OK, I am now well and truly speechless.  I thought I knew what my favourite stones were, and could just get on with setting them into lovely pieces of jewellery, and along comes this baby and throws my mental list of plans into disarray:

Demantoid garnet.  A little gem rarity - diamond-like (demantoid, ta-da!) sparkles dance as you move, and it is such a joyful green that it can't help but make you smile.    The picture really does not do it justice.   I have big plans for you little green garnet.  Oh I do.

A new obsession. Moissanite.

Gasp.

I received today my first ever moissanites.   Beautiful, amazing material.   Stronger than corundrum and just a notch below diamond on the Mohs scale, Moissanite is bright and fiery and dazzling.   This is as far from cubic zirconia as you can get.  I am unable to tell it apart from real diamond myself, and it has fooled professional jewellers many times.  However, the object, I think, is not to see it as the diamond's poor relation and a sneak that's out to fool you, but to appreciate it for its own merits.  Yes, it is lab created - natural moissanite is very rare indeed: it is found in meteoric dust (see? romantic too - it's silicon from heaven!), but the particles are far too small to be usable in jewellery.  Then along come the clever people at Charles & Colvard and they devise a way to recreate the magic.  But whilst the happy chappies at C&C are probably laughing all the way to the bank (trust me, moissanite ain't cheap), I'm happy too that I'm getting the same bling knowing I'm not helping to fund wars in diamond mining areas of the world.  That, for me, is a good thing.  

I would like to use conflict-free diamonds in future, but for as long as I remain at the stage where I can spend 20 minutes under the bench looking for a wayward stone, it's probably wise not to...

Now I just need to decide how best to show off these babies.

Citrine Ring

Practiced a new style of ring today, with shoulders that come up next to the collet.  This one is sterling silver with a gorgeous faceted citrine which is a beautiful form of quartz.  I was surprised to learn that the quartz family includes along with rose quartz and smoky quartz, the less obvious agates, jaspers, chalcedony and even amethyst is a form of quartz!  and did you know that quartz is the second largest occurring mineral on earth and that it is the main constituent in granite stone.....   lovely family, the Quartzes.