Category Archives: Jaspers

Snob Appeal Jewelry-The Good and the Bad

April 11^th was so good, yet so bad.

One of our new shirts. Pretty sharp I think.

I picked up new Snob Appeal Jewelry Logo shirts today from our favorite business apparel manufacturer, Alfies, in Traverse City. We will be looking sharp at all our shows this year. (Good News)

Defrosting April 12th.

On the way home it started to rain and freeze, and fortunately I made it home before all the roads really fell apart. As I write this on April 12^th all the roads are iced and all the schools are closed. We are expecting 10″ of snow tonight and tomorrow; “Inconceivable” This means a good jewelry making, sit by the wood stove, watch TV (unless the power goes off), type day. (Good and bad)

After I got home I checked the E-mail and found a wonderful note from a new customer in California that recently bought an Isle Royale Greenstone Pendant:

Don and Bonnie,

Just wanted to let you know that I received the Baby Alligator Greenstone Pendant yesterday and absolutely love it!

My family is from northern Michigan and both Grandfathers worked at the Calcite Plant in Rogers City. My Mother was an avid rock hound which rubbed off on me. Family lore is that my Dad’s paternal Great Grandmother was the first white woman to be buried on Isle Royale. The greenstone from Isle Royale is, for me, a remembrance of this family member.

I found your website while looking for Petosky stones, and am enjoying your interesting blog.

Thank you for your quick response in filling my order. I will definitely be back for more.

Andree

Andree’s testimonial was wonderful, and represents the feedback we always get. I cannot remember that one of our customers has ever been disappointed with what they purchased on the Internet. You can read more feedback in the “Testimonials” section on our home page.

Royal Imperial Jasper. I'll remember this as the one I broke my favorite pliers while making it.

I had an inspiration today for a couple Royal Imperial Jasper cabochons I cut after I got back from Tucson. While wire wrapping this complicated pendant I broke my long-time favorite wire wrapping pliers. While pinching wire together I heard a loud “SNAP”, looked down, and saw shockingly saw one of the jaws broken right off. These were an irreplaceable pair of pliers I bought years ago, made of Damascus Steel, and just the right size. I would give anything to have them back, having made over a thousand jewelry pieces with them. (Bad) My intentions are to find someone that can make custom pliers and duplicate this set.

Made me cry. Broke after over 1000 pieces of jewelry.

The pliers broke in the middle of making the aforementioned Jasper pendant, so I continued with another pair. After 15 years of using the same pliers, you develop a “feel” for them, naturally gripping your wire perfectly. I was not used to the new pliers and they slipped off a wire and cut my thumb. (Bad) (OUCH!). Ok, bandaid and back to work.

I finished the pendant, and it turned out perfectly.

One of my best buddies, John, gave me a geode cab to make a pendant for him a while back, and I have found I put it somewhere safe and cannot locate it. (Bad) While looking for this cab today, I located three trays of my best Greenstone cabs that have been missing since I came back from Tucson. (Really good) Many of these stones were from Isle Royale from years ago. Now I have to catch up on wrapping these.

Greenstone/Thomsonite from Isle Royale.

I also have purchased several nice Greenstone Cabs from an old collection in the U.P. I cabbed them and made a very nice pendant. Greenstone and Thomsonite combinations instantly sell, and especially ones that were actually found on the island years ago like this one. Greenstones from Isle Royale are commonly lighter green with finer patterns than most from the Keweenaw, and are very coveted. (Good)

I am hopeful that only good things happen today.

Finding the Ent

It’s about time I showed you some of the jewelry I made from all that stuff I bought in Quartzite and Tucson in February. I have been working both in my shop and on my workbench.

This is just so wild.

Another really cool Bumblebee.

One of the most popular stones in Tucson this year was Bumblebee “Jasper”. It is not really Jasper, but is a mix of minerals in a matrix of a volcanic Tuft from the island of Java in Indonesia. Most of the Bumblebee we saw was just yellow and black, but I was lucky to find one dealer that went to Java and hand-picked some of the best material that I have ever seen. These Cabochons were bright pumpkin orange and black.

Treebeard the Ent.

I bought some wonderful Yellow Feather Dendritic Jasper from Utah. Dendrites are tree-like Manganese inclusions in a rock, and make wonderful pictures. The Pendant I show you in this blog stood out when I cut a slab off the host rock. I am a big Hobbit fan and I actually saw what looked like the Ent named Treebeard in it. “Hroom, hm, come my friends.” He’s taking Merry, Pippin, and the Ents in a charge on Isengard. Now where else can you get a totally natural depiction of a Lord of the Rings character for your stone jewelry?

Blue Biggs.

Biggs Jasper is a long-time favorite with lapidary types. It is quite scarce now but back in the 60’s the famous Blue Biggs was very popular. Biggs was re-discovered while building a road, and the best that came out was Blue Biggs. The reason I say it was re-discovered is that Native Americans made arrowheads from this Jasper for many years. Some Biggs was also used for landscaping. I found a nice chunk and this pendant is one cab from this spectacular picture Jasper.

Dinosaur Bone-WOW

There were many sellers of Dinosaur Bone at all the shows, but when I saw a D-Bone slab with a red agate inclusion, I just had to have it for a special piece of fossil bone jewelry.

Royal Imperial Jasper

Royal Imperial Jasper has just such spectacular patterns and pastel colors. I really like this stuff, found in Zacatecas, Mexico about 50 miles north of the city of Guadalajara. Does is remind you of Edvard Munch?

Smithsonite

Smithsonite from the famous Glove Mine in Arizona caught my eye. These stones had unusual colors, and made some really lovely jewelry.

It was a real pleasure to find the oldest living thing in Middle Earth in my stone pile. One of the reasons I cut rocks and make jewelry is because I love these unexpected visions. Stay tuned for the next finds!

Tucson Gem, Mineral, & Fossil Shows-Bear Traps & Beads

Cold 50, cloudy, and rain Yuk!

Here’s a hint for you. If you need good parking at the Tucson Rock shows, try going on a weekday that is cold and rainy. No problem with parking at Electric Park today.

This, by far, was the neatest stack of Tiger Eye we have ever seen. (Electric Park)

We started at a small show at the Grant Inn. There were few dealers there, but Bonnie had seen an ad for Arizona stones and beads, particularly peppermint jasper. (She does keep coming back to pink). He also had some somewhat rare Lightning Quartz beads that when rubbed together create an effect called triboluminescence. We saw him demonstrate the effect when two pieces of this quartz were rubbed together it produces a light eminating from the stone. These stones have a long history of use by medicine men, and are involved with rainmaking.

Triboluminescence: The property that some materials become luminous upon being scratched, crushed, or rubbed. Examples of substances exhibiting triboluminescence include the minerals fluorite (CaF₂), sphalerite (ZnS), and wintergreen LifeSavers! There are two types of triboluminescence. The first type results from the storage of electrons which have been ejected by the penetrating gamma radiation of ⁴⁰K decay in lattice defects. A small mechanical shock is then sufficient for these electrons to overcome their energy barrier and cascade down to ground state. The second type is observed most frequently in sugars (including wintergreen Life Savers), and results from the breaking of certain bonds. This breakage creates free bonds, which immediately absorbs and ionize nitrogen from the atmosphere, producing a characteristic green or blue-green flash. Maple syrup sucrose produces an especially strong effect. (From Wolfram Research)

We witnessed it in a darkened room and it was like lightning in a stone. The closest thing you may be able to relate it to is the effect we sometimes get when grinding a Quartz, or agate on a diamond wheel. I guess just go buy some Wintergreen Lifesavers and be amazed.. This is the wacky sort of trivia I like.

We visited other dealers including Daniel Lopacki that has been our source for saw blades for many years, but had never met him. He is also a great fan of Victoria Stone, and I enjoyed seeing his personal cabochon collection that was very colorful and reminded us how beautiful this stone is for handcrafted jewelry.

Weirdness-traps & beads (and rugs)

Rhodocrosite. Bonnie likes pink!

We were driven inside and saw a Mountain of beads at one dealer.

: You know I like unusual jewelry. Here is something really cool: a piece of a Mastadon tooth from S. Carolina. I promised the dealer I would make a pendant from it, and so I shall.

We returned to Electric Park with darkening skies and shortly after we visited with Mary and Hubert Collins from our rock club, it did start to rain and we had to go inside to tour around again. We found some really nice large drilled amethyst focal beads that we hadn’t seen previously. Also, I went back to the Diamond Pacific tent again and ordered a new set of wheels for my Xpert that I purchased last year.

We left Electric Park and went to the International Wildlife Museum which kept us out of the rain and reduced spending to only our admission fee.

Morrisonite-The KING of Jaspers

Morrisonite (Morrison Ranch Jasper) is considered one of the finest Jaspers in the world, and is often referred to as “The KING of Jaspers”. Unfortunately it has not been commercially mined from its source in SE Oregon, along the Owyhee River, since 1996.

Marvelous coloration is a trademark of the finest Morrisonite. The slab needs to be a piece of Jewelry.

The rockhound’s favorite government agency, the Bureau of Land Management, closed the hunting area and dynamited some of the mines, deeming them unsafe. I heard Gene Mueller of The Gem Shop speak on hunting the area before it was closed. It took a lot of material to produce any “good stuff”.

The combination of the area closing and the limited production in the past has driven priced to several hundred dollars a slab in recent years.

I recently discovered that I had some Morrisonite from an old collection I acquired last fall. I suspect this material may be 40 years old.

It did indeed need to be a pendant. Morrisonite like this is so very rare!

When we bought this collection I hardly checked the material. We just loaded all the rock in buckets, loaded the truck, and drove it home. The buckets ended up in storage, then winter set in, so I’m just now discovering what I bought… .Gotta love it!