Howdy Art Jewelers,   my theme for this current cutting jag is stones that I work in that are GREEN!  One of the things I love about living in Portland, Oregon is that while it's sort of a drab green all winter, the Spring and Summer bring us an explosion of colors and greens in every hue.   Green is the color of fertility, abundance, growth, and money!

One of my favorite green stones is variscite.   An uncommon gemstone often mistaken for green turquoise.   Variscite is an aluminum hydrous phosphate and turquoise is a hysrous phosphate of copper AND aluminum.  Variscite is often called "green turquoise"  but variscite is much more rare than turquoise. This is a lovely large oval that I made out of material from Utah...  the rough material from Utah can be found, but as one can see from the prices for the rough on eBay, it's pretty spendy.  Even more rare than the Utah variscite is the variscite that used to mined in Australia.  I got some nice chunks from an Australian miner in the late 90's and he later told me when I inquired about more that the source had been all tapped out.  I don't see and real Australian variscite on eBay nore have I seen any in Tucson or Quartzite for years.  I have one small chunk left, from which I cut this fat, classic tear drop.  The spots in the Australian material were considered particularly desirable. 

I'm currently working on some Australian Chrysoprase (apple green) and some Mexican Parrot Wing Jasper that has some great greens in it from malachite.   I'll post those images when I get those through the final sanding and polish.

Hi Folks,   I finally knocked out another batch of greenery and just got them all photographed, photoshopped and listed! Here is a freeform Australian variscite bead from the same chunk of rock as the one above, but from the other end and with lots more matrix.  Normally this would be considered very "inferior" quality but I LOVE the patterns in the matrix. 

Here are two TRANSLUCENT apple green chrysoprase pieces I did.  All my chrysoprase is Australian although I might have a TINY piece of Tanzanian material somwhere.  I really like how these turned out...  and this chrysoprase is also Australian, probably the same mine, but just a lesser quality.  This is opaque and has more inclusions in it, but it still has SUCH a striking color and earthiness to it...  

and these three I made using Parrot Wing Jasper from Mexico.  It's old stock material that was mostly mined out in the 1960's.   A combo of chyrsocolla, malachite, hematites, quartiztes and more all spatched together by nature in a nice jasper like rock....

and this is a chyrsocolla in a quartz matrix that is sort of like a parrot wing jasper but not quite.  Still a beautiful blue green color mixed in with the earth tones in this stone....

That's it for now!  There are better close up pictures of each individual stone in the listings, however I will probably take them down out of the store tomorrow night before I go off on my spiritual retreat in S. Oregon.  There is a little handcrafted market at the event where attendees can show their wares, so unless any of these sell between now and tomorrow night (which would be great!), I'll take them with me.   I'll certainly have more to share when I get back. 

 Beautiful pieces, all.  I love green right now.

I am new in here but I keep coming across your posts and I have to say I linger on those materials everytime... I think your cutting skills shouldn't be the only appreciated skill - it's clear to me a good lapidarist (is that the right term?) has fantastic skills in choosing which materials will speak in the most moving way.  I love your choices of materials!

Cynth :)