New Necklaces

Whenever I buy new beads for Tiger Beads, I almost always have to keep a strand for myself. I have been collecting for a while now, not knowing how I wanted to use them. This weekend, I took the time just to be creative and to make myself some new jewelry pieces. This is what I came up with.

Lavender Pearls and Sugilite

Ebony Twist Beads and Amazonite

Cool Ebony Triangle Beads and Yellow Jade

Museum of Natural History

To continue on about my trip to NY, while I was there I went to the Natural History Museum. I hadn't been there since I was a kid. It was packed the day I went because it was saturday and rainy outside. This took away from it being really fun because you had to dodge so many people. But I am glad I went anyway.

So of course, it seems everyone starts at the top floor which is the dinosaur exhibit. It is pretty cool there. Here are just a few picks from that exhibit.




I tried to take more photos but the Museum was either too dark, too crowded to take a picture, or the specimen was in an acrylic case and there was too much glare in the photo. Oh well.

One of the best exhibits for me was the mineral and gem exhibit. This included one large room and small rooms that housed many, many samples of gemstones. I was in heaven! I took many photos but I do not remember what the specimens were. I apologize.



These first 3 photos are of labradorite. It was a beautiful, large chunk of stone.



As you can probably guess, amethyst, a large, lovely chunk of amethyst.


A nice size chunk of gold.


Some type of quartz?


Rose quartz?

And this one I really am not sure of.

This room was cool. If you get a chance to go there, take a look. You will not be disappointed.

Yellow, White or Rose Gold? Why are they Different?

I have a ring at home that is three colors of gold. Just the other day I was wondering, what makes the difference in the colors? Even though I do not work in gold, I thought I wanted to find out and share it in my blog.

Just as I had suspected, the difference lies in the metals mixed into the gold alloys.

Yellow gold is made by mixing metal alloys such as copper and zinc to pure gold.

Rose gold is made by mixing pure gold with alloys such as copper, which creates the rosy reddish color.

White gold is pure gold mixed with metal alloys such as silver and palladium.

Often times, white gold jewelry is coated with rhodium, another white metal, which helps the gold look whiter. In its pure state, white gold is actually a light grey color. Over time, the rhodium wears away. When this happens, the jewelry needs to be recoated (plated) with the rhodium. This may need to be done every 12-18 months and is a fairly common practice with jewelers.

The higher the carat weight of your yellow gold jewelry, the richer the yellow color will be. By that I mean that a ring that is 18 carat is yellower than a ring that is 14 carat. The higher the carat weight in rose gold, the more subtle the rose tone will be. And in white gold, the color will look the same because of the plating.

The one last difference is more in terms of the carat weight. The higher the carat weight, the better your jewelry piece will age because the piece will be stronger and hold up to everyday wear better.

Very interesting information.