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!

Tucson Gem Show - Day 2 (posted a day late)

I was just too tired last night after catching up on all the business related emails to take bead pictures and share them all with you.  I totally forgot to take any venue pictures!  Even today I only took pictures at the new venue (for us) that we visited - but I did get some good ones there.

Yesterday I started out at the JGM - Simpson St. show on its first day to make sure I got first crack at the beads that Toyo Feng of Feng's Trading brought to the show.  He always has wonderful quality, he knows exactly what/how it's made, if the stone has been treated and he often has some cool cuts!  I found him 4 years ago and he is one of a few dealers that I have to visit on the first day of the show. Oh he had some beautiful stuff!  Kingman and Sleeping Beauty turquoise, some gorgeous carved ovals of mosaic creek jasper, beautiful carved citrine leaves .... ah I could go on and on - but I'll let the pictures show the story since I forgot to take a picture with Toyo!  Hotel room pictures are never the best - but hopefully you'll get a feel for how beautiful the stones are.  As you can imagine I spent a lot of time looking through beads!

Various turquoise shapes (and the bright blue pendant is Sleeping Beauty! and those green hue tubes are Kingman!)

more turquoise

Sleeping Beauty turquoise and white agate

Citrine and carnelian

Exquisite carved citrine leaves

Angelite and the cutest little, flat pyrite squares I've ever seen!

Aren't these just the coolest carved barrels in red creek jasper?

Petrified wood beads - wow!

Blue Lace Agate - always a favorite of mine

Natural pearls and nephrite jade from British Columbia

Golden obsidian and purple jasper

After lunch my mom and I had to get something cleared up with the rental car company (I was on empty after only 1 day of driving and they marked full on my contract - oops!) and then we hit Gem Mall.  We went to the 1000 building to start and I didn't see too much that got my creative juices flowing.  I did have to go to Nirvana beads because they were selling the "cultured sea glass" beads for Znet shows and I love to use that in designs.  Unfortunately that was not a pleasant experience.  Our salesman, Nir (who, it turned out after some googling late last night, is the company PRESIDENT!!!) spent almost my entire visit at his booth complaining about Chinese vendors, Chinese products, ...  Why he agreed to sell fake sea glass for a Chinese company in his booth is beyond my comprehension since he was quite negative about the glass, showed total disdain to those wanting to buy it and, even more amazing to me, made no attempt to show the buyers how they could pair the sea glass with his beautiful Czech beads.

I had to go digging through piles and boxes myself (since he didn't even know what products he brought to the show) to try to find some matching fire polished rounds for the sea glass I picked out.  I only found 2 colors that matched.  I have to wonder why he didn't make sure, before he packed for the show, that he had Czech beads that complemented the sea glass.  That seemed like a real easy way to improve sales to me. But it does require some planning ahead of time and you do need to actually talk to the customer about what they want so you can offer them some complementary beads in your own product line.

Anyway - I spent very little since he did not have many of the sea glass styles I like, had very few Czech beads to match and I really wanted to minimize my time around him.  I only caught his first name while I was there but my mom was sure that this Nir was the Nir in Nirvana beads.  It turns out she was right!  Once I found out who he was I sent a scathing email to the company contact email because I just couldn't believe any company president could act that way.  I've had vendors totally ignore me, in which case I leave, and some don't really warm up until they see that you're serious about buying - but I have never heard the amount of negativity that I heard from Negative Nir. Oh - and I had to bag everything up myself!  He just handed me his cell phone to sign for the credit card purchase and walked away!

Nir did respond this morning and apologized.  He said he would take my comments to heart.  I don't know that I'll actually go visit him again to find out because I have had so many pleasant dealings with Starman (Czechbeads.com).  They have a very professional display at the shows (bundles of beads are not just piled wily-nily on tables) and their sales staff is helpful, positive and friendly.

Anyway - I don't want to end this post with that negative interaction so here are the pretty beads that I was able to get at Nirvana.  Won't those Czech rounds look just gorgeous in a cascade above the glass drops?

Tucson Gem Show 2014 - Day 1

I'm back in Tucson (along with my mom) for the fun and interesting gem shows!  We arrived this morning, had some lunch at Las Margaritas, mom got a Starbuck's mocha and then we hit the shows!  Our first stop was the GIGM show at the Howard Johnson motel.

I found some beautiful lapis at Afghan Gem Jewelry.  I don't know if I got the best price around but I liked Aman and found some nice polished and faceted lapis beads.  Here's Aman with some of his beads in the background.

Aman from Afghan Gem Jewelry

My favorite turquoise dealer/miner Shellbone and his dad are at this show every year.  I have a camera that works indoors this year so my pictures are better.  Here are Shellbone, my mom and his dad (and I did not remember his dad's name and didn't think to ask! silly me!)

Shellbone, owner of Nevada Turquoise Co. (on the right), his dad (on the left) and my mom

Shellbone has some BIG gold nuggets he and his dad got while panning in Alaska.  This year they went panning in northern California and found a few more nuggets which he showed us, but they don't compare in size to Alaska nuggets.

Next we wandered around the show some more and met this very nice man, Ibrahim, from Morocco.  I got some Orthoceras pendants (also from Morocco) from him.

 

And I just thought the size and color of this gemstone ball was stunning ... I didn't ask what the stone is and I'm not quite sure.  It resembles rhodocrosite but may be pink quartz - I really should ask when I take pictures of things like this.

Our next stop was the 22nd Street show.  I didn't remember if we ever went to this show but once we got inside we did see some familiar companies like Wyoming Fossils.  This is a great show for fossils - all shapes and sizes.  We also saw this neat art by John T. Benedict of Some Distant World.  He uses parts from cars, nuts, bolts, steel and all kinds of other metal things.  Where possible he designs his pieces so the moving parts can still move!  He even has a button you push on that lantern fish to the right of his head so the lantern lights up!  Very cool!

John T. Benedict of Some Distant World in Tucson, AZ

I stopped by Pangaea Industries to see what they had for interesting fossils and stones.  I got some cool herkimer quartz rough (for a sterling or copper sandwich - details below) and an Orthoceras coaster to replace one that got broken last year at home.

We made one final stop at the Pueblo Gem show to see my favorite larimar sellers, Jens and Cynthia of Larimar Conlight.   I did get some round larimar beads ... I have a soft spot for the beautiful, Caribbean blue color of larimar!  I did a quick check at Yaushing Gems but none of the brios/drops pulled me in.  Then I checked in at Thomas Schneider Gems and found some cool roughs in amethyst and citrine and some tumbled peridot that I'll mount in a sterling washer sandwich similar to this:

And here are the stones (not the best pictures, but they're taken in a hotel room) ...

 

Brazilian amethyst and citrine, Arizona peridot

Herkimer quartz

And below is a sampling of some of the pretties I got today ...

Afghan lapis

Orthoceras

Rhodocrosite

Turquoise and spiny oyster

Larimar

Happy New Year!

OK - so I missed wishing you all a happy new year on Jan 1 ... well the wishes are just as happy on Jan 17!  I've been busy already this year with non-jewelry things - logging consignment sales, traveling, consulting, gardening, ...  I'll be traveling again the first week of February - but then I'll be in Tucson so I'll be posting about my daily discoveries at the Tucson Gem shows.  I'm going to try to get some new designs photo'd and posted so you can see some of what I made for the December shows.  But this weekend I REALLY have to de-decorate the house.  I enjoyed extending Christmas - but it's time to put it all away until December 2014.  Here's a picture of the doggies under the tree this year.

Hopefully I'll have something creative to show you in a day or two!

Check out my artist profile!

I'm a member of the California Crafters Club of Etsy- CCCoE and I've been profiled. You can read all about it here:

http://californiacraftersclubofetsy.blogspot.com/2013/12/artist-profile-cserpentdesigns.html

I actually had to take a picture of my messy workspace - LOL!  They included a picture of my messy garage soldering/fusing/enameling setup but left out the picture of my mess inside the house so let me share that with you ...

My mess during the design process - hmm though not too many bead boxes are visible.  I must have been working with wire this time.