Jasper in all your favorite fall colors!

When I was at the gem show, I kind of fell in love with this Red Creek Jasper.  I don't believe I'd seen it before. There are so many different kinds of jasper, I thought it might be nice to do this month's JCUIN post and collection on jasper.  Jasper is a form of Chalcedony, which is made of silica.  It is always opaque and comes in almost any color, but usually warm colors: browns, reds, yellows, etc.  The different varieties could be named after the area they come from , the country, appearance, etc.  The variations seem endless.  Here are a few different types.  Click on the picture to go to the actual listing for the piece.

First up is Ocean Jasper.  Here is a really nice example:

The picture above is a beautiful rectangular Ocean Jasper bead that Marian at M Davis Designs has made into a copper wire-wrapped bracelet.  That's a wonderful color combination by the way.

A totally different look from the Ocean Jasper is Brown Picture Jasper, shown here in a pendant made by Strega Jewelry:

She has used 14K gold filled wire and added interest with a small burnt orange Mexican opal.

Here is a very pretty jasper called "Blue Sky Jasper" that has been made into a bracelet by Emily of Southern Emma's Boutique:


I think the blues and browns make a nice, comforting color combination.

Here is a beautiful pendant that is a kind I'm not familiar with. I've heard of picture jasper, but this is called "Owyhee Picture Jasper" shown here in a  "Rectangular Puff Pendant":





I just love this pendant!  You can find this necklace at Axcessorize Plus.

Jasper also can be found in green.  Can you guess the name of this jasper?



If you guessed "Snakeskin", you're correct.  I love the snakeskin pattern.  You can find these earrings at Daly Craft Works.

Here is another type of jasper that is different from the norm:



this is Sesame Jasper, shown here in a necklace (with matching earrings) by the three sisters of Buttermilk Sky Designs.  As you can plainly see, Sesame Jasper looks awesome with black!

Another similar type of jasper is Sesame Jasper:



You can find this "Get Spotted" statement necklace at Libby & Liam.

Here is a cute necklace made by Nature's Gems:



The type of jasper is not listed, but if I had to guess I'd say it might be zebra jasper.  Here is some Zebra Jasper in black and white by Catherine of Shadow Dog Designs:



Here are some earrings that feature a gorgeous pair of Leopard Jasper beads:



Leopard Jasper is one of my favorites.  You can find these earrings in the shop of Pretty Gonzo.  And Gonzo is really pretty -- check him out in the bio page.

Not too far removed from the browns of the Leopard Jasper is the Red Creek Jasper that I fell in love with at the gem show:



The cabochons and the roundelle beads are both Red Creek Jasper, so you can see the variation in the colors.
These sterling post earrings can be found in my shop, Shanghai Tai.

Lastly, Scorpio Stones is not in our guild, but she has a kind of jasper I haven't seen before, that she calls "Insect Jasper".  Here's a picture:


I found this on her facebook page, where according to Maryann Sieler, this is also known as  Crinoid Marble.  It comes from the China Seas area (which is actually four seas), and is made up of fossilized plant material.  Jasper or marble, either way, that is one cool cabochon.http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/naturesgems/3271363/jasper_flower_necklace/handmade/jewelry/necklaces/gemstone

Well, I am no where near running out of kinds of jasper to talk about -- but I am out of time.  If you have an item with a different type of jasper than what is listed here, feel feel to add a link, and a picture if you can. (I don't know if you can or not!)  Anyway, I think I will make some more jasper jewelry this weekend.

The # AFPounce Daily

The # AFPounce Daily:

'via Blog this'

Ok, I'm not sure how this is going to work because I'm posting from paper.li. The AFPounce Daily is all about my shop today. Hopefully if you click the link you'll see the addition I'm trying to share, because tomorrow it will be about somebody else.

AFPounce chooses one Artfire shop everyday that the other members promote on twitter. Paper.li creates an online newspaper from your twitter posts. The newspaper looks pretty professional! I started one too, but so far it only has one item on it, which I guess is how many tweets I did yesterday, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, check out the AFPounce daily link above.

Sparkle overload!

I just went to the Gem Show in Chicago yesterday.  I'd been to a small one before, but nothing like this!  Since I was looking for stuff to make jewelry with, I didn't go shopping at the many booths that were selling finished jewelry.  Still, there were so many vendors, and so much cool stuff that I would like to have, that it was really tough to decide.  I mostly bought semi-precious gemstone beads.  I probably could have used some silver too, but the prices have been going up so rapidly, I didn't really know if the prices were good, but they didn't seem to be any better deal than I normally get.  Anyway, I wanted to share some of my finds:

These are little tiny faceted roundelles:  black spinel, green onyx and rhodolite garnet.  I like the fact that the green onyx looks like emeralds and the rhodoite garnet looks like rubies.

I love blue lace agate, and here are some very pretty faceted rounds.  The ones above are larger, and then there are some smaller ones below, along with some tourmaline and agate.

Crysoprase is something I had heard of but not really familiar with.  It is a rare form of quartz, usually the color of green apple, but can also be a dark green.  I didn't see a whole lot of it, but I did pick up these roundelles, which are a pretty green apple color.

Chrysocolla sounds similar, but it is a "carbonite copper" gemstone.  Apparently it has copper and is often found mixed with malechite, turquoise and azurite.  I did find a very pretty pendant made from chrysocolla and picked it up along with a florite one.  I usually don't like to buy pendants that are already made, but I thought these were really cool.

I also picked up some cabs, which you won't be seeing in my pieces for a while, because I have to perfect my soldering skills first.  I got some some turquoise cabs:

In addition to the turquoise cabs, I also got some jasper cabs.  These are all red river jasper, except for the large square one which I was told is "mushroom jasper".

There's a lot more, but I'm only going to show you one last thing.  When I saw these, I really wanted them because I'm thinking I can have a lot of fun with them.  This is called "Suchoo Jade".  I have no idea what that means, but I bought them for the Buddha heads:

Ok, now that I have shared some of my finds with you, I have to go get to work.  I need to make some pieces and hopefully sell a lot of stuff before my husband sees what I put on the credit card!