Gift Certificate Giveaway

Are you all ready for another Gems by Jerri giveaway contest.  Well, here it is.  I am giving away three count em three gift certificates to be used in my Artfire Studio.  Here's how it's going to work. 

1 Entry for following my blog and posting that you are following in the comments.

1 Entry for commenting on your favorite item from my Artfire Studio.

1 Entry for following Gems by Jerri on Twitter.  Comment here and leave your twitter username so I know.

1 Entry for becoming a Gems by Jerri Facebook Fan.  Leave a comment here to let me know.

1 Entries for tweeting your favorite item from my Artfire Studio.  Leave a comment here.

5 Entries for blogging about this giveaway on your blog.  Leave a link to your blog post here.

20 Entries for any purchase from my Artfire Studio.  Leave a comment and let me know.

Don't forget to leave me an email address or some other way to contact you.

This giveaway is open to everyone.  I will use Random.org to pick the winners.  The drawing will be held on Dec 4th at midnight central time.  The prizes are as follows:

First Place:  $30 gift certificate

Second Place $20 gift certificate

Third Place $10 gift certificate

Pretty good prizes right. 

Holiday Sale

Forget about Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Check out my Artfire Studio Holiday Sale.  Everything is marked down 30% until December 10.  I am asking that you place any Christmas orders by December 10th to ensure delivery before Christmas. 
Keep an eye out on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday for extra special deals in addition to this already great sale. 

Quartz

Quartz: common chameleon

If you gaze deep into a crystal ball, you will see a versatile gemstone, one of the most popular gems on earth. Beautiful quartz, the 'rock crystal' used in ancient times to make crystal balls and bowls, is today more often seen set in gold jewellery. Despite the popularity of quartz gems like amethyst, citrine, ametrine, rose quartz, onyx, agates, chrysoprase, rutilated quartz and other varieties, many people in the jewellery industry take quartz for granted because of its affordable price.

Throughout history, quartz has been the common chameleon of gemstones, standing in for more expensive gemstones ranging from diamond to jade. But the incredible variety of quartz is now beginning to be appreciated in its own right.

Purple to violet amethyst and yellow to orange citrine are jewellery staples that continue to increase in popularity. Ametrine combines the appeal of both amethyst and citrine, purple and yellow in one gemstone. Different colours and types of chalcedony, from agate to chrysoprase, have grown in popularity with the growing appreciation for carved gemstones and artistic cutting and carving. And unusual specialities like drusy quartz, with its surface covered by tiny sparking crystals, and rutilated quartz, which has a landscape of shining gold needles inside it, are adding variety and nature's artistry to unusual one-of-a-kind jewellery.

Rose quartz

The pale pink colour of quartz, which can range from transparent to translucent, is known as rose quartz. The colour is a very pale and delicate powder pink. Transparent rose quartz is very rare, and usually so pale that it does not show very much colour at all except in large sizes. Translucent rose quartz is much more readily available, being used for beads, cabochons, carvings, and architectural purposes.

Smoky quartz

Smoky quartz is a brown transparent quartz that is sometimes used for unusual faceted cuts. The commercial market is limited, because there is a rather limited demand for brown gemstones. This variety was sometimes known as smoky topaz in the past, though the term is incorrect and misleading.

Tiger's eye

Tiger's eye quartz contains brown iron which produces its golden yellow colour. Cabochon cut stones of this variety show the chatoyancy (small ray of light on the surface) that resembles the feline eye of a tiger. The most important deposit is in South Africa, though tiger's eye is also found in Western Australia, Burma (Myanmar), India and California.

Rock crystal

The transparent, colourless variety of quartz is still known as rock crystal. Long ago, people believed that rock crystal was a compact form of ice: in fact 'crystallos' means 'ice'. The best rock crystal has the clarity and shimmer of water. Although colourless quartz is relatively common, large flawless specimens are not, which is why crystal balls these days are made of glass, not quartz. Rock crystal has often been used in jewellery, particularly carved pieces. Many stunning art deco jewellery designs featured the black and white quartz combination of rock crystal and onyx. Colourless quartz crystals have also become popular in jewellery due to the popularity of legends about their powers. Many people believe that wearing quartz crystals benefits their health and spiritual well-being.



Rutilated quartz and tourmalinated quartz



While most varieties of transparent quartz are valued most when they show no inclusions, some are valued chiefly because of them! The most popular of these is known as rutilated quartz. Rutilated quartz is transparent rock crystal with golden needles of rutile arrayed in patterns inside it. Each pattern is different and some are breathtakingly beautiful. The inclusions are sometimes called Venus hair. Less well known is a variety called tourmalinated quartz which, instead of golden rutile, has black or dark green tourmaline crystals.

Chalcedonies

Quartz that is formed not of one single crystal but a number of finely grained microcrystals is known as chalcedony. The variety of chalcedonies is even greater than that of transparent quartz, including cryptocrystalline quartz with patterns as well as a wide range of solid colours. Agates are banded. Bloodstone has red spots on a green background. Moss agate has a plant-like pattern. Jasper sometimes looks like a landscape painting. Another staple of the jewellery industry is black onyx, chalcedony quartz which owes its even black colour to an ancient dyeing process that is still used today. Carnelian, another chalcedony valued in the ancient world, has a vivid brownish orange colour and clear translucency that makes it popular for signet rings and seals. Chrysoprase, a bright, apple-green, translucent chalcedony, is the most valued. It was a particular favourite of Frederick The Great of Prussia. It can be seen today decorating many buildings in beautiful Prague, including the Chapel of St Wenceslas. Today, chrysoprase is found mostly in Australia. Unlike most other green stones, which owe their colour to chromium or vanadium, chrysoprase derives its colour from nickel. Its bright even colour and texture lend themselves well to beads, cabochons, and carvings.

source gemstone.org

Artbeads.com Discount

Hey guys I just got this nifty little gift in the mail from Artbeads.  They sent me a nice little share the savings discount card with a code that I can share with my readers.  So, if you are looking for some new beads and such you can get a 10% discount at Artbeads.com by using this code SCF10P-ARTBEADS-0424.  The discount is good until 12/31/09.  Go out and get yourself some new sparkly goodies for the holidays.

Tourmaline

Tourmaline

Tourmalines are gems with an incomparable variety of colours. The reason, according to an old Egyptian legend, is that the tourmaline, on its long journey up from the centre of the Earth, passed over a rainbow. In doing so, it assumed all the colours of the rainbow. And that is why it is still referred to as the 'gemstone of the rainbow' today.

The name tourmaline comes from the Singhalese words 'tura mali'. In translation, this means something like 'stone with mixed colours', referring to the colour spectrum of this gemstone, which outdoes that of all other precious stones. There are tourmalines from red to green and from blue to yellow. They often have two or more colours. There are tourmalines which change their colour when the light changes from daylight to artificial light, and some show the light effect of a cat's eye. No two tourmalines are exactly alike. This gemstone has an endless number of faces, and for that reason it suits all moods. No wonder that magical powers have been attributed to it since ancient times. In particular, it is the gemstone of love and of friendship, and is said to render them firm and long-lasting.

Colours, names and nicknames

In order to understand this variety of colour, you will have to brush up your knowledge of gemmology a little: tourmalines are mixed crystals of aluminium boron silicate with a complex and changing composition. The mineral group is a fairly complex one. Even slight changes in the composition cause completely different colours. Crystals of only a single colour are fairly rare; indeed the same crystal will often display various colours and various nuances of those colours. And the trademark of this gemstone is not only its great wealth of colour, but also its marked dichroism. Depending on the angle from which you look at it, the colour may be different or more or less intense. It is always at its most intense when viewed looking toward the main axis, a fact to which the cutter must pay great attention when lining up the cut. This gemstone has excellent wearing qualities and is easy to look after, for all tourmalines have a good hardness of 7 to 7.5 on the Mohs scale. So the tourmaline is an interesting gemstone in many ways.

TIn the trade, the individual colour variants have their own names. For example, a tourmaline of an intense red is known as a 'rubellite', but only if it continues to display the same fine ruby red in artificial light as it did in daylight. If the colour changes when the light source does, the stone is called a pink or shocking pink tourmaline. In the language of the gemmologists, blue tourmalines are known as 'indigolites', yellowish-brown to dark brown ones as 'dravites' and black ones as 'schorl'. The last mentioned, mostly used for engravings and in esotericism, is said to have special powers with which people can be protected from harmful radiation.

One particularly popular variety is the green Tourmaline, known as a 'verdelite' in the trade. However, if its fine emerald-like green is caused by tiny traces of chrome, it is referred to as a 'chrome tourmaline'. The absolute highlight among the tourmalines is the 'Paraiba tourmaline', a gemstone of an intense blue to blue-green which was not discovered until 1987 in a mine in the Brazilian state of Paraiba. In good qualities, these gemstones are much sought-after treasures today. Since tourmalines from Malawi with a vivid yellow colour, known as 'canary tourmalines', came into the trade, the colour yellow, which was previously very scarce indeed, has been very well represented in the endless spectrum of colours boasted by the 'gemstone of the rainbow'.

Yet the tourmaline has even more names: stones with two colours are known as bicoloured tourmalines, and those with more than two as multicoloured tourmalines. Slices showing a cross-section of the tourmaline crystal are also very popular because they display, in a very small area, the whole of the incomparable colour variety of this gemstone. If the centre of the slice is red and the area around it green, the stone is given the nickname 'water melon'. On the other hand, if the crystal is almost colourless and black at the ends only, it is called a 'Mohrenkopf', (resembling a certain kind of cake popular in Germany).

Tourmalines are found almost all over the world. There are major deposits in Brazil, Sri Lanka and South and south-west Africa. Other finds have been made in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tourmalines are also found in the USA, mainly in California and Maine. Although there are plenty of gemstone deposits which contain tourmalines, good qualities and fine colours are not often discovered among them. For this reason, the price spectrum of the tourmaline is almost as broad as that of its colour.

The 'aschentrekker'

It is not only designers who love the tourmaline on account of its inspiring variety of colour. Scientists too are interested in it because of its astonishing physical qualities, for tourmalines can become electrically charged when they are heated and then allowed to cool. Then, they have a positive charge at one end and a negative one at the other. This is known as 'pyro-electricity', derived from the Greek word 'pyr', meaning fire. The gemstone also becomes charged under pressure, the polarity subsequently changing when the pressure is taken off. When the charge changes the tourmaline begins to oscillate, similar to a rock crystal but much more pronouncedly. The Dutch, who were the first to bring the tourmaline to Europe, were familiar with this effect a long time before it was able to be provided with a scientific explanation. They used a heated tourmaline to draw up the ash from their meerschaum pipes, and called the gemstone with the amazing powers an 'aschentrekker'.

In the fascinating world of gemstones, the tourmaline is very special. Its high availability and its glorious, incomparable colour spectrum make it one of our most popular gemstones - and apart from that, almost every tourmaline is unique.

(source: http://gemstone.org/)

Here is a byhand.me spotlight of some gorgeous tourmaline creations.