Welcome to my December newsletter!

This will be a short issue as the holiday season is filling my time. I did want to send something out, though, and hope you enjoy reading. I also want to wish you all a most joyous holiday season!

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Barbara Kay Jewelry News

I took part in my last show of the year in early December. This was an inside show - the Laurelhurst Winter Bazaar. I have participated in this bazaar for a few years and love it. All of the vendors have really nice, all handmade, items, everyone is friendly and in the holiday spirit, and as always I loved meeting people and talking to them about what I do and love. As you can see from the picture, I have much less room for displaying things in an indoor event like this than I do at an outside fair, which was challenging. It made me have to decide on what not to put out on display!

It was again a wonderful show. If any of my readers came to visit me there - thank you so much! I always love meeting people in person!

New Jewelry

I made quite a few new pieces over the past month or so, many of which sold at the bazaar. Although these two are no longer available, I did want to show them to you since you saw the beginning designs in the September issue, along with the cougar pendant which I showed in the November issue.

I also finished a fall tree, which will be listed in my shop right after Christmas. The actual tree gave me a bit of root and curve inspiration.

And if you like earrings, I will be adding LOTS of earrings after Christmas, ranging from metalsmithed earrings to colorful wire and Czech glass earrings. Here are just a few examples of what you'll see by mid-January.

The large leaves and acorns were made using a paper impressing die and my rolling mill - and then sawn out, antiqued and polished. I was surprised at how well it worked. The little copper leaves were stamped to create the texture.

Stone of the Month: Sonora Sunrise (or Sunset)

In honor of Christmas and traditional Christmas colors, I have selected a beautiful green and red stone to feature this month: Sonora Sunrise, also known as Sonora Sunset. Since I'm a morning person and am partial to sunrises, I'll use the sunrise name for it moving forward.

This stone hasn't been out in the public for very long, so you won't see a lot of it in jewelry... yet. Sonora Sunrise was first discovered in the Milpillas Mine, located in the state of Sonora, Mexico - not far from the town of Santa Cruz. The mine was started in 2006 to extract copper ore. As is often the case around copper ores, a variety of minerals were also found such as azurite, malachite, and pyrite, and of course what we now know as Sonora Sunrise.

This stone is made of a combination of what are considered copper minerals. The red is Cuprite. If you read my last issue, you read a little bit about Cuprite. Cuprite is a copper oxide mineral; it is a copper ore that is sometimes mined to extract the copper inside. The green is Chrysocolla, a copper silicate mineral. Chrysocolla can range from green as you see in these pictures to almost blue.

Shades of color and patterns will vary based on the specific composition of the minerals, as well as impurities or other minerals that find their way into the rock. Sometimes the red is more orange, indicating that a form of Cuprite called Chalcotricite is present. I suspect that the stone in this pendant includes Chalcotricite as well as Cuprite.

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Black is also often present, sometimes at the border between the red and green. The black is another metallic mineral called Tenorite, also known as Iron Oxide. This picture shows the light reflecting from parts of the Tenorite in this mostly green Sonora Sunrise cabochon. This stone is mostly Chrysocolla and Tenorite, but I do love those dramatic splashes of red Cuprite.

Both Cuprite and Chrysocolla were created through similar processes. Mineral-rich liquids that contained copper ions were heated through volcanic activity. They percolated through cracks in the earth's crust. When they came into contact with oxygen, they oxidized and eventually formed into the minerals - and stones - that we see today. The final resulting stone will depend on whether the original liquids were primarily silicates or oxides, as well as what other minerals may have been present during formation.

I hope to create a few more pieces of jewelry using Sonora Sunrise. It can be such a beautiful and dramatic stone! I need to locate a few to add to my collection; I was actually a bit surprised when I looked through what I have that I didn't have more of them. Time to start looking!

And that's it from me this month. I hope you've enjoyed reading. And I hope you and your loved ones have a most joyous and peaceful holiday season! I'll be back after the New Year!

As always, I would love to hear from you. Let me know what you think, and what you’d like to see in future newsletters. I'm working on plans for 2025 and would love to include things that you want to see and read about!