Beadfest was in town this past weekend.
Of course, I went and ended up coming home with a nice variety of gemstones as well as beautiful jasper cabochons for future bezels.
I like buying gemstones in person so that I can inspect the range of color, the quality of any faceting and the presence of any inclusions.
My purchases included aquamarine, apatite, peridot, garnet, labradorite
and some wonderful, large, briolette crystals.
Like all my gemstone purchases, I restrung the crystals on fishing line so that I could keep them organized in my studio.
Old, ugly, expendable beads were used as buffers between the crystals to hopefully avoid any damage as they hang with other inventory.
I had known right away that I wanted to do my tornado-style wire wrapping with the crystals,
and it was a little bit tricky.
The crystals are more fragile than many of the gemstones that I typically use.
Combine that fragility with the 19 gauge wire that I chose to work with and I had to be very careful as I did the wrapping.
Safety goggles were worn just in case some shattering happened.
A simple necklace is what I aimed for, allowing the crystal to be the sparkling center of attention.
The wrapped crystal hangs on a long chain that is interrupted with wire wrapped Herkimer diamonds (a fancified name for double-terminated quartz crystals discovered in Herkimer County, New York) and dangles of faceted labradorite and citrine.
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