I love looking at rocks and minerals. In this area there are not many rocks outcrops unless you want relatively recent sedimentary rocks. So I go to the Gem and Mineral show to get my yearly rock fix. Needless to say I spend many an hour drooling over gorgeous pieces. I just wish I had more money so I could buy them all.
Also I like making jewelry and you can't beat the prices or the variety of items you can find at this show. I mostly concentrate on beaded stuff when I get things because I'm in a Mardi Gras Krewe and its just normal for me to pass out beads to people when I'm doing Krewe volunteer work. I like making my own beads, so that they are unique and something that people would want to keep and not toss away.
This year I decided to bring my camera. I was glad I did have it unfortunately I forgot to bring extra batteries and only got so many pictures before my camera ran out of juice. I was happy to get what I did get. But here are some that I took.
What I really like about the show is the fact there is a lot more going on than just looking at pretty rocks. They have people demonstrating things, like how to make tools from rocks or how to make jewelry. If you have the time they're willing to teach you. You just have to be patient and listen to what they tell you.
They also like to have fun. This entire table was made from rocks and minerals, except there was one edible item there (other than rock salt) that you had to guess what it was. I couldn't figure it out.
And this looked like my favorite meal. Fish with escargot.
It turns out that you could buy a geode from him and he would crack it open for you if you wanted it opened. There were no guarantees that there would be crystals in them, just the fact you are buying a rock. My son read this and had to get one anyway. I told him he had to use his own money and he did. I could tell he really wanted one a lot since he was using his own money. Usually when he has to use his own money he quickly looses interest in an item and decides not to get it.
I told him to get one that was lighter than the others or one that sounded hollow on the inside. He listen well and here's the one he picked out.
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| clear quartz geode |
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| lightening strikes- - fulgurite |
Oh there was so much to see and learn. Some of the stuff I was told I had to take with a grain of skepticism because I knew not all of it was true. There was one exhibitor I knew was way off on his things but he was so convinced he was right. I just let him talk and walked away from him knowing there was no use in arguing with him but also knowing what he was saying was dead wrong.
But then there was fun thing to look at. Like these slices of geodes. You can't see it in this picture but if you held them up to a light there were totally different colors and features you could see than just looking at it straight on. They were so much fun to play around with like that.
Then there were some pieces you just had to drool over and wonder where they came from. I know this big piece came from an area in Mexico. It seemed like a lot of the minerals came from Mexico or China.
But then I did find these that you could tell were the real deal. Here's a fossilized shrimp we both enjoyed looking at. He wanted me to get it until we noticed the price tag. We settled for a picture of it instead.
Or this lizard. Like the shrimp this one was out of my price range, but at least I could get its picture.
This one didn't turn out real well but you could tell that this was a fossilized lobster. I thought it was nice that they had both halves of it. I didn't like the fact that they were selling them separately - I thought they should be kept together. I hope who ever does acquire them keeps them as a set.
One of the grand drawing prize was some teeth that looked liked this. My son really was hoping we would win something like this. With the number of people that were there I told him don't count on it. But I must admit I was wishing the same thing he was.
But the main reason I come to the show is to pick up material and ideas for making jewelry. This one piece caught my attention. I liked the color combination. I was curious as to how it was made.
So I flipped it over and was amazed at how simple it was and realized I could make something like this myself. I just had to find the right pieces. All it was was pieces of rose and milky quarts with a polish agate (the type that's used to make belt buckles) on the front attaching the two strands with a simple pin clasp.
The ones to the left are magnacite (at least that's what the lady wrote down) and the ones to the right are cloisonne.
In conclusion this is just a few of the beads and things that I ended up going home with.
From the top down. Clear crystal beads to use as spacers, then some red glass spacer beads, red cloisonne hearts, white(looks like marble didn't get the name), blue howlite (never heard of that mineral before), aventurine, rose quartz, white howlite, picture jasper, and dyed howlite to look like lapis lazuli.
Recently I did get a new set of book shelves, so I just had to get some bookends to go in it to keep my books from falling down. I found these spectacular ones at the show. The two cone shaped ones, that are raised up and polished out on each end, are Cepholopods - Orthoceras, (about 340 myo) from the Devonian Atlas Mountains, Morocco - North Africa.
Now you can see why I end up spending so much time there at the show and why I wished I had more money.
Muse thought: What I love about blogging is now I can keep posts of these rocks and know when I got an item and where it came from. If I should ever happen to loose the label that goes with these items all I'll have to do is to go through my archive of posts and whala there the information is. It's so much easier than keeping up with scrapes of paper.
I'm now musing on how I'm going to make the beads that I'm going to give to people.
