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 ...
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| Amethyst geode - so cool and purple! |
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| Petrified wood |
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| Black tourmaline |
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| 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.
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| Sunset at gem mall - absolutely stunning! |
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