I recently attended a Spirit Dance where for 5 days we did ceremony, prayers, and dance in a circle around a tree that represented "The Tree of Life."  One of the things I took away from the dance was the notion that I need to keep dancing around that tree in my everyday life, and what better "Tree of Life" to dance around than the petrified wood here in my studio!  Thus begins the "The Tree of Life" series of petrified wood beads from DVHdesigns.  I also consider other petrified organic matter, such as petrified dinosaur bone, algae, coprolites, etc. to be a part of the "The Tree of Life" so I'll also share those here.  While looking into and studying rocks as I cut them, I have a strong sense of "looking back in time" at a snapshot of the earths creation, from an era before and during the long evolution of life here on this planet.  When working with petrified fossils of organic matter, that glimpse into "geological time" takes on all new levels of meaning and connection for me. 

If you're interested in the metaphysical aspects of petrified wood, here is some info I got off the internet and from Melody's book, "Love is in the Earth";  because it is silicated, or turned to quartz, it also has the metaphysical properties of quartz and other forms of quartz such as chalcedony or agate.  Petrified wood is a stone that is good for grounding and stabilizing one's emotions. It is particularly useful in calming survival-based fears.   Provides support for those going through a crisis period of dis-ease, acts as a stone of transformation to help one advance in life to appropriate chosen levels.  It helps one be practical. It is a stone of business success. Petrified wood is a good stone for general protection. Physically, it is beneficial physically for the bones, backaches, skin and hair. Petrified wood is also used for past life regressions because of its inherent link with the past. 

Here is an example of Opalized Wood from Washington.  This wood didn't petrify into hard silicated, quartz material, like most petrified woods.  Instead it turned into a form of opal (common, not fire), which is also silica, but with a different and larger molecular structure, making it more brittle and challenging to work with than regular petrified wood.  I wood treat opalized wood like a big glass or porcelain bead, as opposed to a regular "rock" or "stone" bead.   and this "heart of stone" is also an opalized "wooden heart" 

These next two are petrified palm wood found near the border of Texas & Louisiana.  This wood is a rare and very desirable material among North American lapidaries.  This first little wedge bead is the more common color and patterning, which ranges from various shades of beige and tan with the spots in darker complimentary colors.  The dots are the vertical cellular structure of the palm tree trunk (if cut sideways one gets wispy lines, not quite as dramatic).  In this first piece there is a little cluster of cells that didn't fully agatize and one of them goes all the way through the bead.  I centered that hole in the lower part when I cut it so that the hole could be used as a place to seed bead through onto either side, as a beading station, or it could be used to attach some other small embellisment by a jeweler.    This larger wedge bead is also petrified palm from the same region, but the center of the trunk of the tree was affected by some kind of sulfur compounds during it's petrification, turning it black but leaving the outer region with the tan color.  One can still see the dots in the blackness.  These bi-color black & tan pieces of palm are highly prized finds for a cutter.  I've never seen anyone else make beads out of them.  I only have one chunk of this material that I scored in Tucson last year. I try to balance the colors in one piece, creating a truly yin-yang, heaven & earth, light & dark, two spirit kind of effect.  I'll have to be sure to save one of these for myself at some point as I can probably only make another half dozen "black & tans" with the material I have left...

 I guess I can't get y'all excited by mentioning dino bone without showing ya some, so here's a nice petrified dinosaur bone made with a piece collected from the Colorado plateau.  This has a nice earthy, brick red color and the patterns of cell structure of the marrow of the bone are noticeable.  Dino bone is more highly prized when there is more contrast between the colors of the cell structure and wall, with black and brick red highly regarded.  I love that if one looks close, this dino bone heart has a small healed fracture in it too.  Another one for my Broken Hearts Club Band....

That's all for now folks.  Thanks for letting me share.  Time to get back to the grind.  There's some sycamore & 260 million year old tree fern asking me to dance....

I've always been interested in rocks and fossils but never really had time to do more than just gaze in wonder at the pile my family inherited from my rock hound grandfather.  As a child, my father took us hunting for arrowheads in the farm fields, and rock hunting was always on the itenery each year on our travels.  I get a little nostalgic when you post your new pieces! I love how you do more than just show us your creations--you show us 'creation'. 

Alice

Fossil palm wood is just about one of my favorite stones. I think the black fading to tan is vary nice. I guess that the dino has a broken heart or nearly so from the fracture line in it.

Thanks for your comments.  We certainly are all a part of creation and we are creation, and we are all creators, so it's a priviledge to share my pieces here that I co-create with the elements of creation!  And that dinosaur does have a broken heart, but the fracture line was healed so many millions of years ago with earth glue, that it was solid enough to withstand millions of years of weathering followed by diamond saws, drills, grinding, sanding, and polishing.  I've always thought a broken heart was stronger anyways...  

Here's some more that I've been working on recently as I get my store restocked and try to figure out if I should start using artfire or etsy, in addition to eBay, to show off my work.  I've been dancing around the tree of life some more but the computer had to be "put down" and then resurrected, and that was a frustrating days long process.  I've looked into artfire and etsy, but after 9+ years on eBay, it's hard to make a change, and I do still have good eBay clients.  I tend to attract folks and keep them watching (& hopefully bidding) because I have always offered some 99 cent, no reserve auctions on  things like this petrified tree fern wedge bead.. and even this dino bone bead is currently up in my store as a 99cent auction...  and I continue to make and list high end, rare stuff like this larger, more radically patterned tree fern bead... and I know I could just list items in BOTH an Etsy store and/or artfire, but dealing with all the listing and e-mails has always been my least favorite part of my many years struggle making a living as a lapidary artist.  I really wish I could get a dedicated Trading Assistant or business manager to work with me here in Portland. 

Anyhow, I said I was going to work on some petrified sycamore from Washington, here's a sample of what that looks like... but so much of the patterning in sycamore depends on from what angle you cut against the grain, as this is how a cabochon I did looks cut perpendicular to the grain as it is on the face of the above bead...

and finally, I've been getting back to my "roots" in the tree of life, in that I'm cutting some Petoskey stone, the Michigan state stone.  I grew up in a rock club in Michigan so there's a soft spot in my heart for this fossilized coral.  It's a calcium carbonate fossilization of  a coral called Hexagonaria and is basically the same in hardness and structure as other calcite onyx (Black onyx is NOT onyx).  You may see commercial beads that resemble petoskey stone, but those are all Indonesian agatized coral and hard like quartz, although the fossil is probably also hexagonaria (sounds like a type of VD if you say it out loud).   Anyhow, here's a pretty petoskey stone bead I just made and listed....  Thanks for looking and that's all for this installement from my dance around the evolutionary tree of life!