Hiya,
Just a short post this morning. Lots going on at the moment with jewellery and my latest van conversion but nothing I'm ready to put into a post yet!
Instead here's what I got up to over the weekend. There was a rock and gem show out in the sticks my friend spotted so we decided to go. I've never actually been to a gem show before despite working with them for several years so it was quite an exciting outing.
I didn't have a great deal of spare cash to buy things so I had to be sensible with the few items I bought.
There were lots of the usual tumbled polished stones I'm never very interested as they all look the same. However, there were a few stalls that had some really unique pieces and stones I'd never seen before.
I bought a small piece of this stuff, Peitersite. I'd never come across it before and it's beautiful. Kinda reminds me of tigers eye.
I'm probably going to wrap this in silver as that should compliment the smokey blue colour.
I also bought a nice petrified ammonite and some damaged quartz points for 30p each, at that price I bought a bag full as they're always useful to have around to add to designs.
Now my favourite purchase of the day was something I found whilst checking out a stalls nice Moldavite collection. off to one side the seller had a box of this stuff. Zincite.
Zincite
Polish Zincite Crystals from the Moldavite Mines collection.
Zincite crystals of this calibre only come from the zinc smelters of Poland. Red Zincite crystals are unique and very scarce. Zincite crystals are synthetic, the accidental fusion of natural and man-made. I was given the opportunity to select the highest grade red Zincite crystals from a large old collection.
So the man selling this stuff explained its a man-made crystal. His source was actually from a metal factory in Poland, When the building was demolished they found a huge stash of this stuff growing inside the chimneys. It's likely some of the chemicals from the factory combined and as they were hidden in the stack they were able to grow undisturbed.
From examining some of the specimens I noticed they look like glass but have the weight of metal. It's an odd material, my sort of thing!
Here's the piece I bought, I already started working on a design for it in Sterling Silver.
I'm hoping to have this piece finished in the next couple days so I'll get it posted up alongside another couple bits I've nearly finished.
