Gem & Mineral Show - Bossier City, LA

  Every year about this time (2nd or 3rd weekend in August) the Gem & Mineral show comes to my area.  I look forward to it every year.  Usually on the weekend it is here I try not to have anything else planned so I can be there as long as I want to be.  This year was no different.

   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.

  This shot gives you an idea how big the show is.
   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. 

 

 I really liked the way they would work with the children to show them how it was done.

 and here's some that were a work in progress and the tools used to make the things..

 Finally here's the finish product that you could see.

 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. 

Here's a closer look at the center table.

 And an even closer look at some of the items.  I could tell the cheese was calcite.  The beans were agates,   the jello was glass, the carrots coral, the life savers crynoid stems, the ice in the cup was clear quartz crystals and the salt and pepper shakers were carved limestone .

 

 They even had food for the pets.

 And this looked like my favorite meal.  Fish with escargot.

 I went with my son again and he quickly got bored trying to figure out what was the real food.  He saw this guy breaking rocks open and got intrigued by it.  It wasn't long before he had to pull me over and see what was going on with this guy.

 

 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.

 And here's what it looked opened up.

clear quartz geode

 One of the things I love so much about going to the show is the fact that you get to talk to people who love rocks as much as you do.  It seems like every time I go I learn something new.  Like seeing these. At first I had no clue what they were.  Then the exhibitor told me and I was amazed to find out they were:

lightening strikes- - fulgurite

 Apparently the heat is so intense from the lightening strike it melt the sand. There's nothing like learning something new everyday.

  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. 

 While the fossils seem to come from the mid east.  Like Morocco or Arabia.

 

 My son got really excited when he saw these: 

 But then when we got closer we found out these were scaled down models.

    The tag did not show up in this picture but is says its one fourth of the original size. He was hoping they were the real thing and was very disappointed that they were not.  I told them even though they were models they were still fun to look at and it was neat to see.  He didn't want to look at these for very long after realizing they were models.

    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.

  I also found these earings that I liked and could afford.

 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.

 This piece I found to be so artistic I just had to get it.  It will look good on the shelves too until I fill them up with books (which for me will probably only be a couple of months).

 The red crystals are Spinel and it is in a calcite matrix.  It is from North Vietnam, the Luc Yien Mine.

      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.