Happy 2026 and Welcome to my newsletter!

Here's to fresh beginnings and all of the possibilities of a new year!

Barbara Kay Jewelry News

As happens every year, after having taken a few weeks off of all things jewelry and business related, I'm having a bit of a hard time getting back into the creative spirit. Last year I think I cleaned my studio to get myself going. This year I've been taking a lot of pictures and adding new jewelry to my website. You'll see a few pictures of newly listed pieces in this newsletter... but better yet, head over to my shop and take a look! As a reminder - all of the jewelry pictures are linked to their listing in my shop. Just click to see more pictures and information!

While adding new jewelry, I also made some pricing changes (see my article on silver next up in this newsletter), and have added Free US Shipping with purchases over $35 to align more closely with the few things I have listed in common with my Etsy shop.

As a bit of an aside, I have also decided to get back into creative writing, which is another passion of mine, although I've focused more on jewelry making these last few years. I decided to take out the 100 plus pages of a book I started so long ago that I used a manual typewriter to type them! It's been fun reading through them and deciding what I can and don't want to use moving forward. And of course, developing new characters, broadening out the plot and... well, just writing!

However, I will be back to making new jewelry soon. I actually have drawn out a few VERY rough sketches. Three are for stones that were chosen for me at the Open Studios Tour, and two feature wildlife. These are extremely rough, and of course are just the beginning of the process. Sometimes things change as I move forward, and sometimes they stay pretty close to the original rough sketch (but hopefully looking a little better!).

Top left is meant to be a raccoon peering out from a hole in a tree. The back plate of this one will be bronze rather than silver; the tree surrounding the raccoon will be copper and the raccoon will mainly be silver, with bronze where the dark markings are. The top right will be three little bunnies peering out from under a log.

The three stones are all good sized so I felt a bit limited in what I could do decoration-wise. I thought I'd create some type of line decoration that extends the lines of the Tiger's Eye on the left. I wanted to have a heron on the middle one, as the jasper looks so much like a wetlands-pond scene, but I just couldn't find a good way to do that. So I plan to surround the stone with wetland grasses and a couple of bullrushes, and put a heron on the back. The light purple Tiffany Stone gave me a tropical, languid feel, so I designed a kind of tropical looking, languid flower with a dark purple amethyst in the middle. We'll see how they go moving forward!

Shows for 2026: It's early still, but at this point I am scheduled to participate in the La Center Arts Fair on May 9. More info to come. I have applied to take part in the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival in August but won't know for sure about that one for a while. Unfortunately, the Vancouver Festival made a change this year and is on the same weekend as the Washougal Festival, so I will not be at both.

A Note about Silver

As you probably are aware, silver prices have sky-rocketed this past year. Gold prices have gone up as well, but since I don't work very much in gold, I am not paying quite as much attention to that.

I won't go into a lot of detail about why silver has gone up, but the over-arching reason is that supply is not meeting demand. The low supply is largely a man-made situation, due to mines not operating and also policies being put into place to keep production and supply in general down. China is one of the biggest suppliers of silver, and the Chinese government has in particular chosen to limit the amount of silver that they will export.

Of all the things that silver is used for, jewelry uses probably the tiniest percentage. Silver is also used in industry, specifically electronics (phones, computers, solar panels), medicine and water purification, and electric cars, among other things. People also buy silver and hold onto it as an investment.

This combination of a very high demand and low supply has meant that I and other jewelers are at this point paying at least three times what we paid a year ago for the same amount of silver.

This is all to say that I've had to take some time to review and change prices on some of the jewelry currently in my shop. All of my one-of-a-kind pieces that were added to the shop before January 1, 2026 will not have a price change. My made-to-order pieces, such as bangles, ring bands, and some of the earrings, do have higher prices this year. My future pieces will of course reflect my higher costs as well. Silver jewelry will see the most increase, but because supplies overall have gotten a bit more expensive, there is a slight increase in my copper and bronze jewelry as well.

I am also going through all of my scraps of silver left over from making jewelry and will use what I can to make small pendants and earrings. And I'm looking at ways to use more bronze and copper for some of my jewelry, so expect to see a little more of those metals in the shop this year.

Stone of the Month: Brecciated Rock

Brecciated rock, also known as breccia, is rock made up of angular particles (which are called clasts) and some type of mineral or finer rock particles that act as a cement. This "cement" is called the matrix. In order to be considered breccia, the clasts have to be at least two millimeters in diameter and they have to be angular. If the clasts are rounded, then this type of rock is called conglomerate.

The clasts and matrix can be made of pretty much any rock or mineral, so there's a lot of breccia out there that will never find its way into a piece of jewelry. The picture at the top shows a few rough pieces of breccia so you can see what I mean. The one on the left I found on a stream bank. The other two were found around our property. I made them wet so you can see the contrast between clast and matrix more easily. These types of breccia are fairly common. The types that might be made into gemstones and then into jewelry are a little less easy to find, but they're out there!

The word breccia comes from the Italian term for "broken stones" or "rubble." This is a great accurate name for these rocks.

Breccia was formed when rock was fractured and fragmented long ago. This fragmentation could have happened in a variety of ways. Earthquakes and other tectonic activity created quite a lot of broken rocks. Volcanic action also caused rocks to fracture, either through being spewed out in a volcanic blast, or by lava crust being broken up during a flow. Still others were fractured deep underground due to the high pressure of fluids moving through. Some even occurred because of a meteoric impact.

These fragments of rocks and minerals accumulated, often at the bottom of mountains and cliffs. Over time, other minerals and smaller rock particles filled in the spaces between the fragments, eventually cementing everything together. The angular shapes of breccia clasts indicate that the fragments did not travel far after they were broken and deposited. The more rounded shapes of conglomerate clasts would have been moved further, likely by water, which would have ground and rounded the sharp edges and angles.

Sometimes the clasts and the matrix are made of similar minerals. That's the case with the Flamingo Agate in this pendant. Both the clasts and the more translucent matrix are agate. The clasts have additional minerals giving them the lovely pink color.

Because the clasts and matrix are basically the same material, and because both are fairly hard, the stone can be cut, ground and polished into something beautiful like this. To compare, even though the breccia rock with the green clasts in the picture at the top of this article might be pretty if it were polished, it would never work. The matrix in that rock is softer than the clasts. That means that the matrix would get ground down faster than the clast, creating an uneven surface. This is also called "undercutting." The softer matrix would also not take a polish like the harder green clasts.

The breccia that we are able to use for gemstones are generally called "brecciated stones" rather than simply breccia. More often, they are called by the name of their main material, which is often the clasts. For example, the Flamingo Agate above would be called a brecciated agate. The pictures below are all of various types of brecciated jasper. Often brecciated jasper has clasts of jasper and matrix of a silica like chalcedony-agate or quartz, or even opal.

In the past, I've tended to avoid brecciated stones. I think sometimes the angular patterns are just too jumbled and... well... angular for me. However, my lapidary artist friend, Laurie Gates-Engelhardt, allowed me to use a few of her pictures of past cabochons, and I believe my views have changed!! What do you think?

These are both Owyhee Drift Jasper from the Idaho-Oregon border (southeastern Oregon - southwestern Idaho). Aren't the colors amazing?!! The corners of these jasper clasts are a little rounded, so technically, they may actually be considered conglomerated. Maybe the fragmented pieces just traveled a little ways before being cemented together.

The one on the left above is a Maligano Jasper which comes from Indonesia. The three on the right are examples of Stone Canyon Jasper from near Parkfield, California. These Stone Canyon Jaspers are examples of brecciated stone formed through tectonic activity - specifically along the San Andreas Fault.

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These last two are Whiskey Creek Jasper from the southwestern Idaho side of the Owyhee Mountains.

Finally, here are just a few of the newest additions to the shop - there's a lot more to be seen! Each picture is linked to its listing in my shop - just click and enjoy!

I hope you've enjoyed this first newsletter of the year! I would love to hear from you. Let me know what you think, and what you’d like to see in future newsletters.