TribeBlog

Been super busy this week making custom work every day. Mostly stone stuff. We’ve got a few really amazing projects in the works for multi-material items with stones set in bezels in other materials. I’m really excited about several of them.

Been making a ton of obsidian items this week, and plenty more to do tomorrow as well. Here are a few examples. The first is a really beautiful set of rainbow obsidian pieces in 9mm. They have a wonderful green and purple flash. Don’t mind the stone dust!

Next up a couple of larger sets.. some 5/8″ pieces with a slightly larger than usual front flare and domed face. These pieces were made on the spot while the customer, a regular at our studio, hung out and watched.

A larger set at 1 5/16″ with some beautiful gold sheen hiding in the faces.

I squeezed some amber in today, one piece in particular I was pretty stoked on simple because it’s something we don’t do often. 2g Chiapas amber septum tusk, 1.5″ in length.

The second amber set is TINY. 6g Mayan flared amber plugs! Beautiful swirly red details in otherwise clean and clear pieces.

I managed to squeeze out two sets of the beautiful green fluorite over the past few days. The first set shown is a custom order, and the second set is available. Both are 1″.

If you are interested in the set below (1″/ 25.4mm) please shoot us an email.

Last up I’ve got a really beautiful lip piece in 9mm x 24mm size from a jade we don’t let go of often. The ’sapphire’ blue Guatemalan jadeite from the Motagua river valley. This material is a beautiful blue-green color with marvelous translucency. To give you an idea of how tough jadeite really is, I cut and polished a 1mm thick slice off the back of this lip piece while I was making it. I also took a macro photo of the slice so you can see what the crystal structure and color of a material like this looks like.

You can see in the macro shot that the jadeite is primarily white to clear with tiny specks of blue and green, which are other mineral inclusions. Jadeite in it’s pure form is colorless and it’s the included mineral compounds which create the color. At this thickness it’s so translucent you can read the newspaper through it. There are not many other stones that you could hand work to this extent and still have one piece and not tiny fragments.

That’s all I got for ya right now in terms of the daily dose of eyecandy. There’ll be more soon. In the mean time, enjoy