Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Exciting new stone beads!

As planned, today I trekked up to Mesa for the Rings & Things bead show. I still find it weird that they have these shows mid-week, but I guess it allows them to do several shows a week and spread the beady love around, so I can't complain.

These shows are great because they have table after table of quality stone beads, properly labeled as to what they are and how they're treated. If a stone is dyed and heated quartz masquerading as something more valuable, Rings & Things will make sure you know it. They're also good about dealing with stone suppliers who treat their stone cutters fairly, so I don't have to feel guilty about my purchases.

I don't think I bought quite as much as last year, probably because I still haven't touched quite a few of last year's strands, and I didn't have Chris twisting my arm to get me to buy things I was hesitant about, but I did get some nice stuff.

From top to bottom:

Black lava coins; dyed red lava; dyed cream lava; brown lava rectangles; dyed green lava coins; black labradorite; kiwi quartz; pyrite coins; faceted mossy agate; color-gradiated chrysoprase rondelles; green two-hole, flat-back pearls; rough cut black tourmaline; assorted glass skulls; black pyrite ovals; heated quartz matrix; big round black lava.

Clearly I did not really move far from my green/brown/black/metallic comfort zone on this trip, but hey... they're all pretty!

3 comments:

  1. Nice stash, AJ. I especially like those double drilled pearls. Wish they had their shows closer to me.

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  2. The lava lentils are very cool!

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  3. Arline, they just did Albuquerque for the first time this year, so it seems they do change things up a bit. Maybe they'll make it your way next year :) And the double-drilled pearls seem like they will be fun to design with.

    Marilee, they feel really cool, too! They have a surprisingly smooth texture because they're treated with some sort of wax. The red and ivory rounds feel like coral (which is why I bought them), and the rectangles are rougher, with bigger holes.

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