Just in, I have 6mm rose cut labradorite. Just a few of these lovely, translucent stones with fantastic labradorescent flash, so if this is your bag, hurry before they go! Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to supply these for this price in the future. They are $3 per stone and you can find them here
One of my gemstone books informs me that efforts are being made to come up with a more enticing name for this vibrant and dramatic green stone, but that was written a few years ago and it is still known, somewhat off-puttingingly as chrome diopside. But never mind the fact that it sounds like a brand of car wax! This is a fantastic stone; highly saturated, highly refractive, so that stones appear brilliant, and with a vitreous lustre. The saturation of the stone can mean that larger sizes appear dark and closed, but the good side of this is that it is one of the few stones that retains great saturation in small sizes. At the moment, it is also not enhanced or treated in any way, so it’s a great option for those of you who like their stones natural. I have some new in stock; rose cut 3mm and 4mm chrome diopside, in addition to the 3mm and 4mm cabochons that I generally stock. The 3mm rose cuts are $5.75 per stone and the 4mm rose cuts are $15.50. This pricing reflects the fact that chrome diopside is far more common in small crystal sizes so therefore as you go up in size, the price increases exponentially. The material I have is clean, with great saturation.
You can shop the whole of my chrome diopside range here
I’ve been aware for a while now that, especially on Etsy, some gemstone sellers have been taking my images and even my descriptions and using them for their own products. Over the past few weeks, I have been contacted numerous times by customers and other reputable Etsy sellers experiencing the same problem to let me know and the problem seems to be escalating sharply. Obviously it’s annoying for me but I think it’s really bad for customers who buy on the basis of photographs and they are actually buying something different. It’s deception. Because of this, I am going to be watermarking all of my photographs from now on. Whilst I realise that this is not going to completely solve the problem, it feels like an important first step. I will try hard to ensure that the watermark is faint and is placed so that it does not obscure the body of the photograph, see below:
It’s going to take a while, but I will be replacing all photographs over the next few months with watermarked versions….
My Joopy Gems August newsletter is out today, better late than never! Exclusive offer for newsletter readers. Click here to read.
My June 2015 newsletter is now out with some exciting new stones on sale, and a fab 10% discount coupon! Click to read, or why not sign up at my website to make sure you never miss out?!
This is interesting. I picked up this article today about counterfeiting on Etsy. It’s from JCK news and quotes estimates of around 5% of all goods being sold on Etsy as counterfeit. I found this interesting as I’ve often looked on Etsy and seen items that look suspiciously not handmade; mainly jewellery as that is my main area of interest. Sometimes I’ve seen a particular style of necklace copied by multiple sellers. It’s not just the Vuittons and Chanels either; I’ve had informal feedback from customers that they feel their own designs have been copied. So I’ll be watching this closely to see what happens. As Albrecht Durer said in 1511, “Beware, all thieves and imitators of other people’s labour and talents, of laying your audacious hands upon our work.” !! (exclamation marks are mine!)
Out now is my latest newsletter. I always run an exlusive newsletter offer every month, so if you aren’t signed up, why not sign up at www.joopygems.com, and make sure you never miss out! This month it’s a 10% discount for the month of April, so why not hop over and grab your Easter discount!
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, my latest newsletter is now out, with new product round-ups, information and an exclusive offer. You can pick up the discount code from the newsletter, but why not sign up now at www.joopygems.com so you never miss another offer?! Click here to read the newsletter; click here to shop
Out now is my December newsletter with a round up of the month’s specials, and a fantastic exclusive discount! You can pick up the discount code from the newsletter, but why not sign up now at http://www.joopygems.com so you never miss another offer?! Click here to read the newsletter; click here to shop
I love these. Golden rutilated quartz rose cut cabochons. I mean, I really, really love them. I love looking at them, I loved photographing them (and I don’t always love that part) and I love imagining what you’re going to do with them. A customer asked a while back for rutilated quartz or white topaz freeforms, and I thought about photographing 100+ white topaz stones and I confess my heart rather sank into my boots. Not that I don’t like white topaz, far from it, I just couldn’t get all that excited about photographing it. But the gold rutilated quartz; well that’s another matter. It’s all different and it’s all fascinating. I’ve got stones that have thick gold needles that look like straw, stones with fine strands, like angel-hair, some aligned, some in thick masses, some beautifully and artfully arranged into intersecting patterns. It’s fabulous stuff; known also as Cupid’s darts, Venus Hair stone and Fleches d’Amour. Can be hard to get it to look nice, as the quartz host and the gold rutile crystal inclusion have different hardnesses, so you can easily get pits on the surface, but most of these stones have an excellent polish. I think these stones make fabulous one-off contemporary pieces; the kind that get you noticed and get people talking. As with all of my rose cut freeforms, these are rose cut on the domed side and tabled on the reverse so can be set either way up in a bezel, window or prong setting. Why not have a flick through and see if anything grabs you? I have a feeling that these will not hang around for long. Shop now.
