Tucson Gem Show Day 3 (posted a day late!)

Let's see now I have to think back almost 2 days as to what we did yesterday ...  Ah yes I had to start out the day with Toyo (again) due to some request from friends for amber beads.  I got those and found another strand of pretty muscovite for me :)

Then my mom and I went to a new show for us - the Arizona Fossil and Mineral show.  This is a great show if you want to see gem/mineral specimen pieces, meteorite parts, and crystals of all sorts.  I just went there to see what they have.  I wasn't in the mood to go cab shopping and didn't see any beads that called to me. I did see some tiger eye rough which I have never seen before - it is pretty even when it isn't polished!  This type of show is a good way to see what the rough of a stone looks like so you can get a better idea when it is fake ... 

Here are just a few of the cool stones we saw ...

Amethyst geode - so cool and purple!

Petrified wood

Black tourmaline

Green tourmaline

Then we found a great pizza place for lunch - Grimaldi's.  We just had salad and the luscious oreo cheesecake - but the pizza is thin crust and looked yummy!  Of course I forgot to take a picture of our fun waitress!

Next we went back to Gem Mall.  My first mission was to find some sterling at a decent price.  I did find some at a much better price than I saw yesterday in the other gem mall building.  So I got sterling stuff, then checked out the Czech glass bead colors at Starman and then just started wandering the floor ...  I was really tempted by some African beads - thin glass rings about 10mm, some old trade beads (supposedly quite old - I just liked the pinch shape and lovely pastel color) and several types of bone beads.  But the rings are a HUGE strand and it is pretty price and only one color per strand.  I can envision uses for thin glass rings, but not for as many as there are on probably a 3' strand (they are 2-3mm in width - you do the math!)...  Ah well - I'll let my designer brain think over what I saw to decide if I should go back and see what kind of price I can negotiate for.  Another booth did have beautiful, opaque turquoise glass rings ..... for the same price ... but I just don't know what I would do with so many! Further wandering brought me to another booth with inlaid conch shell beads and inlay bone beads. I remember seeing those last year - or something similar and I was tempted but didn't bite.  This year I did get some of those since they just looked cool. Once again I forgot to take pictures!  Hopefully I'll be back at gem mall - but I got behind on things today because I found some new wonderful vendors!  Here are the cool beads I got.

And mother nature gave us a treat as we left with this absolutely gorgeous sunset.

Sunset at gem mall - absolutely stunning!