A Farewell

Today I traveled down to Gig Harbor to shop at Gig Harbor Beads. I had received an email last week that they were having a gemstone and pearl sale. I do not usually frequent bead stores as I need to buy in large quantities and at really low prices in order to keep my prices so reasonable. Gig Harbor Beads is an exception to that. I like their selection of stones and several times a year they have really good sales of 50% off. Also the owners are very pleasant to deal with.

I discovered today that they will be closing by the end of the month. That makes me sad, another local business bites the dust. I bought twice as much as I had planned because they have some unusual stones and I don't know where in the area I will be able to find such things again.When buying stones I like to see them in person and hand select each one. No online stone shopping for me. I hope I can afford to go back again before they close their door.

Todays treasures....

 The grey and black are zebra jasper. They will be nice pendants mixed with black and grey seed beads. The other stone is feldspar agate. I can see the small squares as earrings and in bracelets. The long rectangles will make interesting pendants.

This is one of my favorite stones. Green opal. It is the matrix that gem stone opal is found in. You can sometimes see tiny flecks that pick up the light. Those are shards of gemstone opal. I have 3 more large ovals that I will use as pendants. I can see using the larger of these new medium sized ovals as small pendants and the smaller ovals as earrings and in bracelets. So far I have been mixing this stone with copper and various shades of brown seed beads. This bunch has some very pretty green stones in it too so perhaps they will steer me in a different direction.

 The 4 greyish stones are needle agate. Very interesting designs. The rest are an assortment of agates. Look at the variety of colors!!