New earrings and the Friday Finds

::sigh:: I am on the 3rd round of photographs of the new stuff, and ALL of them just look blechy. I am getting tired of taking pictures of the same stuff and over and over. I have never had this much trouble before, which is good, but I have to say, it's really frustrating. One of the pictures that did come out, though I have yet to shoot an alternate view of it, what with all the hideousness of just landing the first, is of the Libby faustite/apple-green turquoise earrings. I can not determine whether the stone is actually faustite or apple-green turquoise, since both natural stones are the same color, with pretty much the same color matrix. Faustite is a member of the turquoise group and gets its color from zinc, as opposed to the copper which gives turquoise its traditional blue coloring. It's a beautifully vibrant stone, with a grey to brown matrix, but these are color-treated - I suspect because they have a lot of grey matrix in them. I think they would have been really cool-looking on they're own, but they're still a really nice color and hand-wrapped in sterling silver. It took me a while to figure out how not to lose the curve in the final wrap, and identical symmetry is out of the question, but I like how they turned out.



I also have some pretty neat smokey quartz earrings out of some really awesome tumbled smokey quartz, beautifully clear. I'll try to get that photo up next. I wish I could figure out why I suddenly can't take a decent photo to save my life. :(

And now, the Friday Finds...on Saturday. Of course. :)

Kudos to Annette Rubin, President and CEO of Belli Cosmetics. It's about time someone came up with a website that utterly panders to the vanity of pregnant women. And no, I do not mean that in the sarcastic way in which it came out. I mean pregnant women deserve to be pampered and indulge in products designed especially for them, and Ms. Rubin has done so beautifully. She's no dim bulb when it comes to marketing, either. Kudos, Annette. Good job.

These are handsdown the coolest wall stencils I have ever seen, and you can buy the color-coordinated paint, too, so your stencil comes out the way it's pictured. For that matter, you can buy anything else you might need to stencil. It's a pretty neat site, if stencilling is your bag.

I do not care for Uncommon Goods in general, but these potato parchment bowls are way cool and really pretty. It's kind of amazing someone came up with the concept, and I have to laud artist Margaret Dorfman, hence the pimp.

Okay, shoppers. I leave you to your own devices with these, but they are not my cup of tea. At all. Especially at 32 bucks a pop.

The geek in me loves The Cubes, on the other hand. Seriously, I think they're brilliant, and I love the little slide show intro on the main page, with Also Sprach Zarathustra playing under it. The whole thing is genius.

And now if you will excuse me, I have a bunch of pendulums to make for a meeting with a vendor this week.

que sera sera,
Jenie