Elemental emerald and sapphire

August is always a good time for re-stocking and general housekeeping and I will be adding significant amounts of new items as well as replenishing old favourites over the next few weeks. To start with, I have some nice sapphire cabochons in 5mm and new emerald 3mm cabs. Sapphire is a nice, open blue and fairly clean with some colour zoning, most likely heated. The emerald is a light blueish- green and included. It is also fracture filled. I also have some truly beautiful tanzanite 3mm cabochons. Pale blue, but beautifully clean. The sapphire cabochons are $29 each; the emerald $6.50 and the tanzanite $5.75 per stone.

www.joopygems.com

Venus hair

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.

http://www.joopygems.com/categories/freeform-rose-cuts-polki-and-cabochons/rutilated-quartz-freeforms-golden.html

All that glitters is not gold…

CFRDIACRCR61 1 CFRDIACRCR53 3

…because sometimes it is diamond!! I’ve had these promised for so long and I have finally got them sorted, weighed, photographed and listed. This is opaque, coloured diamond in a wonderful array of colours; I have soft pinks and silvers, acid yellows and greens, reds, browns and golds. They are all quite small – don’t be fooled by the pictures, which have blown them up well beyond their actual size. This has also had the effect of accentuating any inclusions and colour zoning. Now, you might like the odd inclusion (I do) in which case that might be disappointing. Or you might not, in which case feel free to cheer. Either way, they are very pretty, and despite being opaque they do have that quintessential adamantine glitter. Prices from $10.25 up; to shop, click here:

http://www.joopygems.com/categories/calibrated-rose-cuts-and-cabochons/diamond/coloured-diamond.html

Blue heaven

I’ve been quiet for a few weeks, but I have been rushed off my feet, first of all attending a couple of GIA labs here in Hong Kong, relating to gem grading and identification, but secondly trying to get a whole lot of new stock photographed and listed. First up is more turquoise freeforms. I had some of these back in the spring and they just flew out of the shop, so I have re-stocked in larger quantities. This is US turquoise, stabilised with resin or oil. This is a very common practice with turquoise as it is a very porous kind of stone and so the stabilisation improves both the durability and the appearance of the stones, as it helps them to take a better polish. These freeforms are mainly polki cut – that is rose cut on one side and tabled on the other, although I do have some rose cut with flat bottoms. I always think polki cut is a great way of getting a lot of stone for your money and certainly they are always popular, fitting in well with a contemporary, individual feel to your designs. I’ve got them in a good range of shapes, sizes and therefore prices. Prices from $7.75 – click here to buy.

http://www.joopygems.com/categories/freeform-rose-cuts-polki-and-cabochons/turquoise-freeform.html

Somewhere over the rainbow

From which you can deduce that this is all about rainbow moonstone. I have just listed a selection of sizes, shapes and qualities. The best of it is very, very good and the least good is still pretty nice. Top of the pile are 6mm AAA cabochons, almost completely clean with superb adularescence. It’s becoming hard to find nice quality rainbow moonstone, and to find it at a good price is well nigh impossible. Well, aren’t you lucky lot, because at $19 per stone, this represents fantastic value. For the first time I am offering oval cabochons, 8x6mm and 10x8mm. I have these in AA and A quality. Obviously as I am sure you all know, the larger the stone, the harder it is to find clean material, but the AA is pretty good even in the larger size; just a few wisps and internal fractures, and the A is more included but not overly so and the adularescence for both is really good. Prices are $16 and $24 for the AA and $8 and $14 for the A, 8x6mm and 10x8mm respectively I also have 10mm, 8mm and 6mm in A and AA. The 10mm AA is really nice; almost clean stones with superb flash in a 10mm size, and the price an excitement-inducing $26.50. I’ve saved a few of these for my own personal use as they are not just sublimely beautiful but also a good investment with the soaring prices of cleaner moonstone. Prices range from $4 per stone for the 6mm A to $26.50 for the 10mm AA. Now, I don’t have many of any of these, so if you like them, don’t dilly-dally. Click here to shop!

Confident, sophisticated, expressive, calm…

Apparently all words associated with the colour blue, and you can add to that ‘rare’ and ‘desirable’, because what we have here is tanzanite; beautiful, serene, periwinkle blue. New in stock I have plenty of 3mm rose cut cabochons, and a certain number of 4mm rose cut cabochons. This material is sublime; eye clean with superb lustre and the faceting is perfect and precise. Hence the not so many of the 4mm. I think that this is bound to go fast, not wanting to sound like a used car salesman, but it’s not so easy to find clean and reasonably priced tanzanite in these cuts. And these are reasonable; the 3mm rose cuts are $5.50 per stone and the 4mm rose cuts $17.50 per stone, all in USD. Tanzanite is from Tanzania, which contributes to a rather fluctuating supply, and is a relative newcomer to the world of cut stones, not being discovered until the 1960s. It is routinely heat-treated, as unless it has undergone some natural heating at its point of origin (which is rather unusual) it is generally a brownish colour in its natural state, and these stones are indeed heated. Shop now, to get your hands on these beautiful, sparkling gemstones.

Indigo Iolite

Also new in stock I have 4mm and 6mm rose cut iolite, at $3.15 and $13 per stone respectively. An interesting stone, with its pleochroic qualities; an indigo blue face-up colour (ideally!), but demonstrating browns, greys and yellows from different angles. In fact I have sometimes had customers contacting me to tell me their iolite is faulty, so clearly grey is it when viewed from the side. No, not faulty, just the nature of this fascinating stone. Legend has it that is was known as the ‘Viking Compass Stone’, and that thin slivers of the stone served as glare reducers and polarising filters that helped Viking marine navigators locate the sun on cloudy days, and therefore locate their own position. It’s a beautiful stone, taking it’s name from ‘ios’, the Greek for ‘violet’. It’s a fairly hard stone, at 7-7.5 on the Mohs scale, and for those who are interested in such things, not treated. It can’t be heat treated as it has a relatively low melting point so would not withstand the kind of heat that, say, sapphire would be subjected to to intensify its colour. This material is slightly included but has a good, saturated indigo colour. Click here to buy!

Finally Freeforms!

‘Finally’, because I’ve had these a long time and it’s taken me forever to get them sorted! Each one individually weighed, measured, photographed, priced and then listed. And I have lots. Choose from Brazilian amethyst, citrine, chrysoprase, labradrorite, rainbow moonstone, pink opal – in a pale or a deeper pink, white moonstone and black spinel. This has become a really popular cut, and the fact that the stones are cut quite shallow means that it’s possible to have a large looking stone for a reasonable price. They look great in necklaces, set in window settings, or they make fantastic statement rings in either a prong or a bezel setting. Because they are random freeforms, it’s not easy to pair them up, but coming soon I have some really beautiful translucent chrysoprase freeform pairs which would make great earrings. I’m currently sold out of turquoise – that sold out as soon as I listed it, but I do have some more on hand which I will be listing as soon as possible. They are also versatile, cut with a table on one side and rose cut on the other, you can set them either way up. Hard to choose a favourite – I love the pale pink opal, as it is so delicate, like the colour of a French manicure or perhaps more romantically, alabaster. Labradorite is always a favourite and I adore citrine for its bright, sunshine qualities. They are all lovely. Grab them while you can, because these do tend to go quickly. And why not check out my newsletter for an offer that makes them even more irresistible! There’s an offer in the newsletter every month; why not sign up on the Joopy Gems homepage to make sure you don’t miss out?

Labradorite and the pot of gold

I’ve had such a headache with labradorite over the past year or so. Trying to find nice quality material, with good labradorescence, I’ve seen an awful lot of murky coloured material with little or no colour play, and I’ve sent back lots of the stuff as being no good. After all, labradorite without its famed stunning optical effects is just a dull grey stone. Now, it’s not that difficult to find beautiful individual examples of it, but sourcing a reliable supply that can produce calibrated cabochons in quantity is a different matter. Now I can say, I think I’ve found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; beautiful translucent material with superb flash. This really is stunning material, with minimal cracks.

I always get the same message from customers when they buy labradorite; good flash and no cracks, please. This is quite hard, because it is the layered nature of labradorite, leading to the interference of light at its internal structures, that produces its famous schiller, and quite often these cracks and fractures break through to the polished surface of the stone. So, whilst I will say that this is amongst the cleanest material I have seen, it is not completely free from cracks. But you can see for yourself; it is very beautiful, and when I opened my first packet of samples, I breathed a sigh of pure bliss!!

Currently I have 4mm, 6mm and 12mm cabochons priced at $0.95, $2.25 and $18 per stone, and you can find them here. There is a choice of colours; you can opt for blue/aqua flash or green/gold flash. In time I will be replacing all of my labradorite stock with this wonderful material; look out in the next few weeks for 4mm and 6mm rose cuts.

Welcoming back ‘old friends’

Finally back in stock I have some labradorite in sizes and cuts that customers have been clamouring for. These are labradorite 5mm round cabochons at $1.75 per stone, 5mm honeycomb faceted cabochons at $2 per stone and 6mm honeycomb faceted cabochons at $3.50 per stone. I am not quite sure what the problem has been with re-stocking these; I think it is just quite hard for my suppliers to get hold of nice quality rough. Such a lot of labradorite on the market is not nice; full of cracks with almost none of the highly desirable labradorescence. Since it is my opinion that a labradorite without good flash is like a blunt pencil (pointless) I’ve waited it out until now and finally I have some nice quality stones in large quantities, so I shouldn’t run out for a while! Feel free to buy like crazy!

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Tag: cabochon