Happy New Year! Here's to a wonderful year for all of you - and a creative year for me, I hope. I also hope you will enjoy this first newsletter of the new year. As always, I welcome your feedback!

Barbara Kay Jewelry News

I took a wonderful class this month which was all about the flex shaft rotary tool (similar to a Dremel but with a foot pedal for speed control). While I've used this tool a lot in the studio, I've used it for pretty traditional things such as sanding and polishing. This class opened up so many other possibilities, including a variety of texturing ideas as well as doing things that I have typically done by hand. I'm very excited about trying them out as I move forward with my jewelry. Of course, it also is pushing me to buy a few more tools!

And that leads me to thoughts I've been having about my jewelry business moving forward.

Last year, especially the first half of it, I found that I was putting way too many hours into jewelry orders that weren't much fun for me to make: bangles and little stacking rings in particular. This left little time for me to create new pieces - or to really enjoy the jewelry making process. Which is, of course, why I began this business in the first place! It also negatively affected my work-personal life balance.

I made a few changes in my shop last year, and moving forward, I plan to put additional things in place that will allow me to spend more of my time enjoying what I do - more time creating new things, trying out new skills and processes, and most of all, having fun. Hopefully that also means you'll be seeing more new pieces from me this year.

Save the Date: I'm still waiting for final confirmation but it looks like I will be setting up a booth in Dennis 7 Dee's (formerly Shorty's) Art in the Park on March 21 and 22. I'll have more information in the next newsletter.

New Jewelry

I have slowly been adding things that I made in the last couple of months of 2024 to my shop and will continue doing that over the next few weeks. Here are just a few (click on the picture for more information and pictures):

And I am starting to work on a few new projects, using stones and wildlife ideas offered by visitors at the Open Studios tour (sea horses, mice, snake, hawk). I used to not want people to see my very rough sketches, but you might find it interesting to see the very beginning of my design ideas - and then the final pieces (which hopefully will look a lot better than these rough sketches)!!

From left to right: a new mushroom pendant, with mice, an agate pendant with a snake (appropriate as we are about to enter the Chinese Year of the Snake), three small, simple pendants to balance out the big statement pieces, next is another agate with a more abstract design around it, a petrified palm with smoke tendrils and an agate-metallic glass doublet with an undersea coral scene (and seahorses). I am working on a design for a hawk cuff, but that may be part of the next group of projects.

My goal is to incorporate a variety of textures and three dimensional layers. We'll see how things go - hopefully I'll have a few of these finished for the next newsletter.

Stone of the Month: Stone Treatments

This month, I thought I'd not focus on a specific stone, but write about some of the treatments that are done to stones used in jewelry. I won't be writing about imitation, simulated or lab created stones although I may have an article about them in a future issue. Instead, I want to describe some things that are done for various reasons to natural stones.

I like to use completely natural stones in my jewelry. Well, other than the fact that they have been cut, shaped and polished of course. For the most part, that's not hard to do. But there are treatments that are sometimes done to stones I want to use, and then I have a choice to make, and sometimes I'll choose the treated stone. After reading this article, hopefully you'll have a better idea of what some of these treatments actually mean when you see them mentioned in a stone or jewelry description.

Before starting, I should say that stones I buy as natural stones may possibly have been treated without my knowing it. Ethical stone sellers will let buyers know (just as I will let you know if a piece of jewelry I make includes a treated stone), but even they may not always know when they buy a slab of rock from someone else.

Dying: This is one treatment I try to avoid if I can. Agate is often dyed; but usually this is obvious as the colors are bright and unnatural looking.

Other than the bright colors, you can often tell if a stone is dyed because the color is concentrated in fine cracks or - in the case of beads - around the edges of the drilled hole. You can see that concentration around the holes of these beads, which I bought online not knowing they were dyed.

Sometimes dying is not so obvious. As I was researching for this article, I discovered that lapis lazuli is often dyed to give the stone a brighter or more consistent blue. Lapis often has white calcite inclusions; dye is sometimes used to hide that.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to know if lapis lazuli is dyed or not. I went through all of my lapis stones, and this one I feel may be dyed. It is a very uniform and rather bright blue, compared to most of my others. You can't see any white calcite bits - although there are a few pale spots that could have been white at one time (before being dyed).

Apparently even jaspers can be dyed to make the colors more vibrant, although I don't think that is done very often - especially with rock that is collected, cut and polished in the United States. Here again, you can look for concentrations of the colors in cracks and surface pits. I do not believe that any jasper cabochons I now have in my collection have been dyed; I believe the same about my agates.

Heat: Heating stones to affect their color and clarity has been done since ancient Roman times. It is still being done, using different processes of course.

Amber is an example of a material that is often heat treated.

Natural amber is usually cloudy and not always a "desirable" color. Millennia ago, as sap dripped it accumulated in layers. As the sap hardened into what we now know as amber, the layers weren't always connected well enough to make a useful piece size-wise - and there was often dirt trapped between the layers (which you can see in the beads above). Heating, in particular in an autoclave which also includes pressure, can connect the layers more securely as well as remove some of the impurities. Oven heating, another type of heat treatment, is done to clarify and sometimes deepen color - or simply to develop a more desirable color.

Heating can cause tiny little fractures throughout the amber, which catch the light and look like glitter inside. The amber in these earrings show that evidence of heat. I do have to say that even though this is an indication of heat treatment, the glitter looks quite pretty, especially in the light.

Heating is a common treatment for other gemstones, including precious gems such as ruby and sapphire. These are heated to either create or enhance color.

Other gemstones commonly heated include citrine, topaz, tourmaline and aquamarine, among others. It's very difficult to know whether these gemstones have been heat treated, at least with a naked eye. Heat (and the changes created by heat) does occur naturally, and so even when it's done by a human, most people feel it is an acceptable process. With very expensive stones such as rubies there may be a noticeable difference in value between a high quality natural ruby compared to a heat treated one that looks the same. For most of the less expensive gemstones like citrine, the value difference is minimal if any.

Here's an example of a stone that changes color through heat naturally, but which is also often treated by humans. Tiger's Eye is usually a golden-brown color, but when heated it becomes more red, and is actually called Red Tiger's Eye. Red Tiger's Eye can be found in nature but it's fairly rare, and more often when you see it as cabochons or in jewelry it has been treated by humans.

This is one I purchased recently from someone who didn't know whether it had been treated or not, so I will assume it has been. It's pretty, though, isn't it? And notice the stripes of black metallic tenorite running through it.

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Irradiation: What? Radiation is used on stones? Yes, it can be! Just as with heat, radiation is used on some gemstones and also on pearls to affect color and, in the case of pearls, to create additional luster. This process is actually regulated by the Nuclear Regulator Commission (NRC) in the United States; other countries have their own forms of regulation.

One of the most common stones to be irradiated is blue topaz. Blue topaz almost never occurs naturally and even if it does occur, the color is very pale. Radiation turns the white, clear or very light blue stone to a more desirable color like these little faceted examples. After irradiation, the stones are slightly radioactive, and they must be set aside for a period of time until that radioactivity has decayed below levels that could pose a health risk. Once the stones have been approved for sale, they are exempt from NRC regulations. Based on all of my reading, there is not nearly enough radioactivity contained in an irradiated stone once it has been on the market and put into jewelry. Whatever small amount of radiation remains continues to decay. Although it is very difficult to tell whether a stone has been irradiated, you can be sure that blue topaz has been. Other stones that might be irradiated include diamond, tourmaline and pearls.

Stabilization: Some desirable stones are quite soft and even crumbly. In order to be cut, shaped and polished without just falling to pieces, it sometimes needs to be stabilized. Turquoise is a prime example. While there is high grade turquoise that is hard enough to be used as is - and cost reflects that - much of it will be stabilized. Because turquoise is so porous, it will absorb body oils which can change the color over time, usually changing bluer turquoise to green. Stabilization keeps that from happening and in general helps the turquoise maintain its color over time.

Stabilizing is done by soaking the stone in an epoxy or acrylic resin. Very low grade, porous turquoise that is stabilized will have almost a plastic appearance, which I don't like. But most decent quality turquoise that has been stabilized is attractive, looks natural, and will be much more durable than non-treated stones. It is almost impossible to know by looking if a good piece of turquoise has been stabilized; methods that can be used to determine stabilization will damage the stone. It's probably safe to assume that most turquoise is stabilized.

There is apparently a newer method of stabilizing that doesn't involve toxic or plastic types of chemicals called Natural Processed Turquoise. I haven't seen any turquoise for sale that indicates this process, but possibly it will become more common over time. There are other things that may be done with turquoise, but I'll save that information for a future Featured Stone article.

A few other soft stones may have some stabilization done to them, such as chrysocolla (a copper related mineral like turquoise) and ammolite (gem-quality material cut from fossilized shells).

There are other treatments sometimes done to stones, but these are the ones you'll see most often. I hope this has given you a little more understanding of the processes that are used, and how they affect various stones. If you are interested in more depth on any of these treatments, let me know!

Sources used for this Stone Treatment article:

~ Silver Works Studio Gallery - gemstone info​

~ Unearthed Gemstones - 8 Common Gemstone Treatments And Enhancements​

~ International Gem Society - Common Gemstone Treatments Cheat Sheet​

~ United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission - Backgrounder on Irradiated Gemstones​

~ Gem Select - Gemstone Treatments: Stabilization and Impregnation​

~ Photos by Barbara Bureker

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.