New Gemstones, What Fun

About once a year, when it's possible, I like to get up to see my primary gemstone suppliers who are located not far from Boston.  I like to do this for a variety of reasons, the first of which is that they are friends as well and it's always nice to get together, even if only for a few hours. The second is that, while they are happy to come down and see me with some of their merchandise if I ask them to, they have so much merchandise that they can never bring it all down.  And quite frankly, even after all these years in the business, I still love to see lots and lots of sparkly things all together, and I am still both fascinated and enchanted with gemstones. 

While diamonds may look more or less sparkly, and more or less white, colored stones are great because every one of them is unique. Even in certain consistently colored materials there can be subtle variations that make each stone different.  That's what is so much fun about them! And when I get up to my dealer's place I am still like a kid in a candy shop.  Let's try one of these, and one of these, and oooh look at that one over there.  Then when they start writing up the bill I have to put half of them back because I can't afford them, but it's still a lot of fun. 

I made my annual trip up there this past weekend and came back with some beautiful new stones. I got two pairs of opals from the new Ethiopian source that I have been excited about (and shown you) in some of my past posts, that are quite stunning. One pair will be out within a week I believe and I'll try to get a picture up when they are done.  I also got a set of eight small watermelon tourmalines that I am going to be making up into a bracelet shortly.  They were all a very unusual lighter colored stones and two of them have nice alien faces in them (don't believe me?---come in and see it when it's done!).  My suppliers also gave me some items just to put out, including a fantastic natural color 3.37 ct. orange sapphire, a beautiful pair of rubies and a large, wonderful pair of tanzanites among other things.  So there are lots of new pretties to look at.  Come by and ask to see the orange sapphire, tell me you read about it here, and I'll give you a $50 credit against any custom job or case piece (good any time!). 

The ruby ring pictured above is a new piece I just put out.  I had gotten a couple of rubies in for someone to look at, and I liked this one so much I kept it because it was so pretty. The ring is 18k gold.