Jewelry and Such
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Below are the 11 most recent journal entries recorded in
Cat (Jewelry Stuff)'s LiveJournal:
| Tuesday, April 13th, 2004 | | 12:57 pm |
Mirror Memeage
I probably won't have time to summarize the rock show today even though the summary is long overdue. In order to bide my time, here is a meme tidbit I saw a while back but never had time to emulate: Check out my interests, and if any seem interesting or incomprehensible (or both), ask about them in a comment. | | Saturday, March 13th, 2004 | | 10:02 pm |
Dwarven Stones
A few days ago I posted about Crystal Caste's Dwarven Stones. Since then I've signed up to have ebay notify me when they're up for auction. So far there seems to be one person listing them regularly, and so far no stone has been repeated. They end up closing in varying degrees of discount as compared to the online sources I've checked. If anyone would like me to keep track of various stones and notify them, please post which stones as a comment to this post. Aside to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) 9thmoon -- one of the sets up for auction right now is malachite. My other idea is in a friends-locked post. Just let me know in a comment to this post if you need to be added to my friends list. Current Mood: Helpful | | 7:38 pm |
| | Friday, February 13th, 2004 | | 9:36 am |
Whee
So yesterday I decided to figure out how much I would need to save in order to get the kind of equipment I used during the stone-setting course. The amount, before tax (we can pick up and save shipping since we're so close), was $1000.00 even. | | Saturday, November 29th, 2003 | | 8:43 pm |
The Two Rings
When I told my mom about the idea of the family rings for her and Emily, she liked the idea and gave me her ring size. Then she heard I meant to use 2.5mm stones and was visibly disappointed; she had wanted larger so they could be seen better. Recently on ebay I saw a setting which takes seven 3.5mm stones, and there was much rejoicing. Thaigem was running a Halloween sale so I managed to get the stones I needed (three amethysts, one aquamarine, one emerald, and one sapphire) except for the peridot, which they were clean out of in 3.5mm. I popped onto ebay and bought two peridot from a person I've had two painless dealings with before. Oddly enough, the Thaigem order showed up first, and a few days later the ring blank turned up. The peridot, which the Canadian seller had mailed out the day after I won/paid, has yet to make a showing. I e-mailed the guy the other day and he noted that it usually takes three full weeks to get from Canada to Albuquerque, but that if it hadn't arrived mid-week to contact him and he would start insurance proceedings. I had already set the following stones, left to right: amethyst for me, sapphire for Andy, aquamarine for Dave (Pamela's SO) which can also double for dad, and amethyst for Mom. I planned on doing peridot for Grandma, emerald for Pamela, and amethyst for Grandpa (purple, dark, pale, purple, pale, dark, purple), but due to the way the ring was set up it would have been murder to set the stones I had and save the peridot slot. Finally yesterday I gave up and went to Rio Grande and got a pack of 3.5mm peridot, but the smallest pack they had was 50 stones. Hence the offer I made in my normal journal; I have more peridot than I know what to do with. Meanwhile, two days before we found out about Granddad I e-mailed Emily to ask her about her ring. Various things to consider were whether she wanted her parents included, or if she wanted Owen (Erin's SO) represented. Needless to say she was far too frazzled to make a decision when she replied, except to note that she didn't want it too big and that she'd rather Owen not be in it. Since the design I'd originally looked at had 2.5mm stones (instead of 3.5) and since it was set up in such a way that the stones weren't all in one line, I decided on a seven stone for her. There was a fiasco in which prices for the blanks had nearly doubled since last year, though on the good side the pendant/pin combos I plan on making for the family have gone down in price by quite a bit. At any rate on Wednesday we got a note in the mailbox saying I needed to sign for a package, and on our way to Rio Grande yesterday we picked up Emily's ring blank. I set it last night since I had gotten the 2.5mm stones even before we left Chapel Hill. I can't take closeup pictures with either of our cameras. I'm not sure it's possible with either, and last I checked they didn't have close-up lenses for those models. Andy is going to try to take pictures of both rings anyway. Well, once we find Mom's. It looks like Heidi decided to play hide-the-ring-box. I also need to see if I can find the CZ and the garnet(s) which decided to explore the floor. In the end my mom's ring is larger than I would wear myself, but you can see the stones really well and the colors are very vibrant. Emily's also turned out a little large, and I'm wondering if I should only have done four stones for her, Tom, Andy and Erin. If anyone is interested in the 3.5mm peridot jewelry offer, please let me know. I can definitely find earring, pendant, and ring settings, with or without accent stones, which I probably have lying around or can get easily from Rio Grande. It'll be even easier to get them in six months or so -- our new house is really close to Rio Grande. Poing! | | Saturday, October 18th, 2003 | | 4:20 pm |
| | Monday, September 8th, 2003 | | 8:40 pm |
Ebay Feedback Gripes
Whenever I go to buy something on ebay, I look at the person's feedback unless it's 100% positive. Even if they have a rating of over 10,000 positives, I want to see why they've garnered complaints, and how many they have how recently. I mean, if the person has never gotten a negative when selling but has been dinged a few times for being an NPB, then it's probably safe to buy from them. On the other paw, if they've sold inferior merchandise or intentionally mislead in their item descriptions repeatedly, I'll go elsewhere. I've come to find a few repeated negatives on ebay which really annoy me. The saddest thing is that this has never happened to me; I'm empathizing with those who sell gems on ebay. There are three negatives in particular which really make me want to throttle the buyer(s): The first is shipping costs, and usually occur when the seller is not in the US. In every case I've seen (two or three Thai sellers and a German seller, at the very least), they explicitly state in their listings that they ship via FedEx or overseas mail, and at least two of them have flat rates which they put in their listings several times. So, what's with the morons who leave feedback that shipping was high? The second is with stone size. Typically, the complaint will be "Smaller than I expected", except not so grammatically correct. And if I follow the link and look at the auction, it explicitly states 3mm round or 8x6mm oval or what-have-you. Folks, it's not that hard: take out a ruler (I think they sell for $.10 at grocery stores) and measure out 3mm horizontally and vertically (make sure they intersect in roughly the middle), then draw roughly a circle and you'll have the size. For the 8x6mm, draw and 8mm line, then at the 4mm point settle the ruler so that the distance between 1 and 6 are even. Trace out the 6mm and then draw the lines appropriately for the type of cut. Heck, I did this even before I was serious about jewelry-making; it's not rocket science. It's certainly not something to complain about if you can't be bothered to use a ruler beforehand. Now, if the stone is supposed to be 8x6mm but is only 6x4mm, then say so in the complaint, giving exact dimensions. To me, "Not as large as I expected" does not mean "Smaller than advertised". Last but not least, the people who buy stones with the clarity explicitly stated, and then complain that it wasn't in as good a condition as expected. This is especially stupid when the stone is a diamond, because they have a very specific scale of how nice the rock should be. If it says "IF" or "F" then yes, you should expect one hell of a stone, since that means internally flawless (OTOH it'll be boring, since the flaws are what makes diamonds all colorfully sparkly). But if it's listed as "I2" (internally flawed 2), then it was almost tossed into the "industrial diamond" bin because I2 means very obvious flaws which will actually weaken the diamond's structure. I found this out through esoteric methods searching arcane books so old they were hand-written... no, actually, I learned it from any one of 93,873,963,828,492,873 sites returned by Yahoo when you search for "diamond". Also, if you bought a .5 carat diamond for $10.00, you should expect that it's probably not going to be winning any "best in show"s at the next diamond expo. Again, if the listing stated VVS 1 and you could see the flaws even without a 10X loupe, then say so. But don't just say it wasn't in as good a condition as you expected. Yeesh. | | Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003 | | 2:22 pm |
I gots rocks!
Pretty rocks! Some aquamarines which at least look blue (when they're that small, pale stones often appear white), and some really cool gray zircon. Plus, of course, the hideously expensive amethysts mentioned in an earlier post. | | Thursday, August 28th, 2003 | | 9:48 pm |
| | Saturday, August 23rd, 2003 | | 1:23 am |
| | Friday, August 22nd, 2003 | | 11:40 pm |
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