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Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

CynthiaV — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:36:49 GMT

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 :)

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

KipperCat — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:50:57 GMT

Beautiful pieces, all. I love green right now.

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:55:03 GMT

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.

Thanks for looking!

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:50:27 GMT

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.

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:44:28 GMT

Peachtree:
Wow, great pendants! I love that Sonora Sunrise--so much vivid color all in one stone! Alice

Thanks Alice! I sold one of those two beads already. I DID find one of the suppliers of this rough that I saw in Tucson who is selling rough on line. So I may get another chunk of it. Just really incredible colors. Nothing quite like it.

Moving on.... Well Easter is almost upon us so I thought I would share a pic of a fantabulous rutilated quartz bead with a cross in it and TWO other crosses mirrored in the back of the prism. I have more pics of this in the listing in my store. It was quite the Tucson adventure and find as I describe below...

A really, truly, remarkably beautiful centerpiece bead made out of Rutilated Quartz and expertly cut in Brazil. This one of a kind gem weighs 87 carats and has a flat mirror polished face with two mirror polished faces on the back side, angled facets at either end, and a finely finished girdle. Measures 52x18x12mm with a 2.5mm drill hole for easy stringing on a silver or gold chain or a fine cable (I have snake chains in my eBay store that will fit this). The mirror reflections of the face are so perfect that in one of the pics you can clearly see a disembodied piece of my finger reflected in the stone! This magnificent prism of included quartz is beautiful enough with the myraid reflections that bounce around its magical inner space, but the real splendor comes from two distinct rutile inclusions. Rutile is a mineral composed primarily of titanium dioxide.

What makes this piece even MORE FABULOUS is that the two distinct rutile cystals CROSS each other and form the figure of the Cross! It is very clear and very evocative of a beautiful and organic Cross. To add to the magic, the mirror polish on the back facets REFLECT the inclusions in the stone, so from the proper angle, one can look in and see the actual CROSS, that is IN the stone and then there are TWO MORE CROSSES reflected in the background! This beautiful gem is deeply imbued with intense Christian metaphor and I think it would make a great talisman for aperson who would appreciate both it's beauty and the opportunity to meditate on the Christian mysteries and the meaning of Jesus death on the Cross.

When I was in Tucson this year I spent an afternoon checking out the offerings at the American Gem Trade Association show at the convention center. This is THE high end gem show in Tucson! My associate and I found a wonderful dealer from New York City who had some of the most fabulous and creative gem quality focal beads that he had custom designed and had cut in Brazil. We were especially taken with his limited stock of just a few dozen quartz centerpiece beads that had been just perfectly mirror faceted on the face and sides, except with one side on the back left with a hammered finish. They were very striking and he had a small selection that were completely mirror faceted faces, without the hammered finish face accent. Of those few, there were TWO that had rutile inclusions in them and of those two THIS ONE is by FAR the better one! So I picked this one up for resale on eBay and thought it would be most appreciated in this time before Easter. It really is so fabulous that if it doesn't sell I'd be more than happy to keep it in my own private collection and wear it regularly!

The colors of Spring and the traditional pastels of Easter inspired me to do this bead. Lavender Jadeite Jade from Turkey. The REAL stuff. EVERY piece of "purple" or "lavender" jade I've seen on eBay looks like a fake to me, but this is the real McCoy! Only enough of this rough left to make ONE other bead and then there's NO MORE! Only saw this rough for sale once, ever, and that was 10 years ago. I saw only two dealers in Tucson that had real lavender jadeite jade and they just had traditional strands and stuff and were they pricey!

I hand cut this piece which measures 52x28mm and is 13mm thick with a 3mm drill hole. It has a mirror polished finish. Nice low domed faces on each side and rounded edges on this elegant oval-egg shape. It looks like amazing white waves in sea of purple and lavendar waves.

It's a RARE, NEW material that I got ONE chunk of in Tucson in 2007! I didn't see any more of the material this year. Same guy who had great quality agatized coral rough also had a small pile of this beautiful purple seam agate. The rough showed great layering of purple, lavendars, whites, translucents, and wisps, with a bit of earthy crusty colored agate on the edge. I haven't seen any agate that really compares with this!

That's it for now. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share. I've also got 99 cent auctions in my eBay store with no reserve, so folks can get some nice custom cut beads in spite of the economic downturn!

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

Peachtree — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:19:52 GMT

Wow, great pendants! I love that Sonora Sunrise--so much vivid color all in one stone! Alice

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:14:58 GMT

Hey Beaders! Here's some lovely pieces I made out of new material I got when I was in Tucson last month. I got one chunk of this material called Sonora Sunrise from Sonora, Mexico. It's a beautful sky blue chrysocolla with firey red cuprite and I believe that the black is tenorite. They are all secondary minerals after copper. I only got three beads out of the one fist sized chunk of rough I got and these are the two big dramatic ones... I picked up a pound of massive kyanite crystals from Tanzania and cut these two pieces. The dealer is a German fellow who is from near Idar Oberstein and deals only in Tanzanian gemstones. I really love the cats eye effect and schiller that make these appear like a blue gray lightning captured in stone...

and I got this super adulaurescent sunstone from Tanzania from the same dealer. If one looks at the edge of this sunstone bead there is a moonstone effect on the side, sort of like a sunstone-moonstone hybrid!

. That's it for now. I'm cutting quite a few new things so more to come!

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:54:41 GMT

Howdy folks,

Culver:
I like the idea of the extra thick backing for the doublets. What do you use for the back... basalt, obsidian, ??? Regardless, they are very nice stones and a great idea.

Mike

Hey Mike, I generally use gemstone jet or lapis for the backing on my laminate beads, but that's just personal choice and mostly when I'm working with quartzes or opals. I like to use Mother of Pearl for other translucent stones. One could certainly use anything one wanted to including basalt or obsidian. It depends on the look you want. When I was at the AGTA show I saw some work of the cutters who back in the 90's inspired me to do laminate doublets and I got re-inspired with some wicked new ideas.

So, made it home from Tucson and the annual hajj to Gemstone Mecca! Finally settling back into the studio and breaking in some INCREDIBLE new diamond wheels, playing with new treasures, and breaking out some old treasures that were too hard for me to cut with my old worn wheels. It's such a wonderful feeling to have a really, really hard jasper or agate just melt underneath your fingers as you bring the shape out of the stone. Good diamonds are a lapidary artists best friend....

My new grindings from February 19th. First rough grind on my new, rock devouring, 60 grit, 8"x2" diamond grinding wheel, Sachi. I named her after the company from India she came from. That's Sachi on the left. She's a realllllly good girl and was a SWEET deal! She chewed up all those stones in no time and those were some hard puppies, I picked them out special to break her in and test her out. Front row, L to R, Gem Chrysocolla (not turquoise), Indonesian Purple Seam Agate, two Willow Creeks (yes, both the maroon and the ivory one came from the same mine in Idaho), Indonesian Lace Agate, Aussie Tigerye, Texas Petrified Palm Wood, Sudbury Shiny Cobalt Ore (some silver & arsenic mixed in, for sure), and the oval at the end is an Brazilian Oco Agate geode filled with sparkling drusy quartz crystals. All will be bead focal pendants. The second row is more stuff! This is just the first stage, rough cut. They need at least another grinding at 120 grit, then sandings at 120, 220, 600, 1200, 3000 grits and THEN a polish.... cutting rocks is hard.

More later.

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

Culver — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:56:46 GMT

I like the idea of the extra thick backing for the doublets. What do you use for the back... basalt, obsidian, ??? Regardless, they are very nice stones and a great idea.

Mike

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:54:22 GMT

Hi All! Having an exciting time in sunny Tucson and found some great deals on rough! Unfortunately TWO out of the three laptops my group was going to have down here are DEAD so I don't get the chance to write or check on my internet world much! Hopefuly will fix that soon! Here's a few fab pieces I finished before I left Portland....

Banded Psilomelane from the Crown of Silver Mine in Mexico, old stock, HARD to cut, HARD to drill, and HARD to polish! I've only see a few dealers here in Tucson with a few trays of EXPENSIVE cabochons of this material. Both the rarity of the rough along with the challenge of cutting it keep most lapidary artists away from working on it. I still have NEVER seen anyone make beads out of it! one of my favorite things about this piece is how different the patterning and banding are on the different sides. The shiny black and gun metal silver grey go so well together.

I also got busy on some fab moonstones before I left. This one is a minty green and 99% flawless, crystal clear with great adulauarescence.....and I cut this nice pair of silvery grey moonstone teardrops. For those of you who know my work, you know how RARE it is for me to cut a matched pair of anything! I really SCORED on some great feldspar rough from Tanzania here in Tucson, So when I get back home and get in the studio cutting again there will be some great sunstones, burgundy red cats eye feldspars, and massive mint green moonstones! I also got some great aqua colored massive kyanite and some really unique big blue iolites with little coppery sunstones shimmers in them!

That's all for now, will try and report more later!

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:31:01 GMT

HI Folks! It's been a rough and tumble couple of months for this stonecutter but I'm finally getting back to the old grind. I'm really trying to put my heart into it, so here's a couple of stone hearts that I've done recently.....

I hand cut this snowflake obsidian heart. One side and the edges are perfect and polished. The other face is partially high polished polished with the upper area left with the natural surface of the stone, with shiny breaks and conchoidal breaks on the surface. It's part of my "broken heart" series, which is about how broken hearts are as strong and beautiful, if not more so, than an unblemished heart. This one of a kind focal bead has a nice big 3mm drill hole. and then there's this really nice, BIG, petrified DINOSAUR BONE heart! Great brick red colors and cell structure. A completely healed, strong & stable, natural fracture barely visible on one side, makes this beauty a part of my "broken heart" series!

and I really love the brilliant golden needles PACKED in this rutilated quartz, wonky shaped heart. I like the way that the clusters of rutile and the cloudyness of the quartz mostly hide the wide drill hole....

That's all for now for this thread. I also recently cut the NICEST, black drusy psilomelane bead that I've ever cut, with a band of white agate running through it, but I'll post that on my drusy thread where it belongs... Thanks for looking and have a nice day. Regards, David

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:18:14 GMT

Hi Folks, I haven't posted to this thread in awhile as I thought that since the old image hosting service I was using "went down" in July, I expected all the pics on this thread to disappear! Evidently they're still holding them out there in cyberspace so I thought I would update this with some of the new gemstone focal beads I've been working on. I finally got my studio moved and all the equipment hooked up again. Very happy with my new space, a detached garage with windows, insulation, a bathroom, hot water, attic storage, and more! Also 20% cheaper rent than the smaller, slanty floored, concrete cave space they were going to let me move in to in the old industrial arts warehouse where my old studio was! So while I'm worn out from a week of moving rocks, lapidary equipment, office stuff, and then RESETTING it all up, I'm happy that it's over with and I can finally get started working on production for the Portland Bead Society Show the 1st & 2nd of November!

ANyhow, here is a very cool patterned Indian Paint Stone bead I recently made, and I really like the matte finish on this baby snowflake obsidian wedge bead... and a nice soft heart made out of variegated serpentine... and keeping my heart in a colorful mode, here is a Peruvian Pink Opal heart, very nice big, nearly flawless piece.... That's it for now. Time to get back to the old grind. Hopefully will be a new grind this week when I take possession of a lightly used Diamond Pacific Genie grinder-sander-polishng unit that I found at an estate sale! My old one is near death and 1/3 of the baseboard (particle board!) crumbled when I moved it from my studio! Thanks for looking.

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

DVHdesigns — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:45:50 GMT

To Otter: re: granite. Thanks for the offer, I appreciate it, but I've got PLENTY to cut as it is! So no need to pick me up any New England granite.

Hi all! Long time no post. I've been busy transferring from my old eBay management system, called Channel Advisor (CA), to a new system, called Auctiva. I have used CA for 7+ years and while I have hard copies of all my old images, the web versions of everything I've posted on this forum have been hosted by CA. Since CA is no longer supporting my system or allowing access, I assume that at SOME time soon they'll stop hosting all my old images and when they clear their files, my pics in this and my other threads will disappear. Soooooo....I'll post a little bit more here but I'll probably start some new threads soon with my new images of my work hosted elsewhere. Probably a good time anyway as these threads are a little image heavy now, as well as the fact that I'd like to have different threads to address and share my work in different mediums. Thanks for all the viewing and sharing everyone's done on these threads of mine since I joined this forum.

So here's a sampling of some of the things I've been working on in gemstone and natural stone materials...

This is a petrified dinosaur bone heart. Part left "natural" surfaces and part buffed and polished. This is not really petrified in the silicated sense. It's a softer, more sedimentary fossilization of the dino bone. This came from a big chunk of joint bone that was rather calcified and I still have a piece that has solid calcite growing in the center of the bone. Not sure where this rough came from, but probably the Colorado Plateau.... easy to see the cell structure of the marrow and the dark bit is the natural outside layer of the bone.

a nice inverted teardrop of a spiderwebby Variscite from Australia... this long slender "dog tag" bead is made out of hard, silicated petrified wood. Not sure of the locale of the rough, but somewhere in the U.S. West or NW regions. great patterns & colors in the wood. matte finish... a nice rounded, big bead of pink river rock granite with a nice stripe in it.... and finally a really unusual orbicular rhyolite from Mexico. This rhyolite was a new find at Tucson in 2007 and there was still only the one vendor with rough from the mine when I was there this year. Great eyes! that's all for now. I have some other cold worked glass pieces that I'd like to share, but that's for another thread! Have a great day!

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

Otter — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:02:53 GMT

oh well thanks for atleast looking at the request. if your intrested in the new england granite im headed that way hopefully in september and would be more than happy to pull you a few peices

Re: Custom Cut Gemstone Focal Beads by DVHdesigns

Jonas — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:26:03 GMT

Really cool pendants! The opal pendant....what is the black backing and how is it attached to the opal?