What a long strange trip its been......Well, Joined the Florida Society of Goldsmiths last month and am busy working on some custom pieces along with a few knives for people. Went mining for Amethyst up in Georgia a few weeks ago and had a good, although very exhausting time. Found enough facet grade material to at least pay for the trip, plus some pretty specimen pieces. I'll be posting some photos of some of that stuff soon, still working on the lighting aspect of taking photos like that. Let's see....oh, yeah, bought a faceting machine (it's what you use to take rough gemstone material and cut all those pretty little flat spots all over it to make it sparkle.) As I get time I'll post some pictures and details of the machine along with maybe a tutorial, or at least details of my learning experience with the machine. It's kinda funny, one would think the hard part is getting all those angles right....no, that takes a lil practice but is pretty straight forward..what really takes the longest to master is getting anything close to a good polish on the gemstone!

Working at Utrecht Art supplies is as always entertaining and interesting. For the last two months we have had the pleasure of featuring Mike Tuten, Owner of a local tattoo parlor and all around great guy, in our store on Fridays to work on watercolors and answer customers questions about his techniques. If you have a chance to come in and see him work, do so, I'm betting you won't be disappointed.

Well... today I'm off from work but have lots of things to do, so......later.