A couple years ago I had the pleasure of traveling to Tucson, Arizona with Swarovski-Elements for the annual Gem and Mineral shows. This year, an up-and-coming new jewelry line, Victoria Louise, was kind enough to bring me along. I had some free time to walk a few different shows and tents around Tucson this time. The amount of beads, stones, rocks, minerals and gems was overwhelming but inspiring and of course a lot of fun! Who doesn't love rocks!?
The Tucson landscape—cactus in the setting sun.
Hundreds of crystals. I mean thousands of crystals everywhere!
So many phantom crystals!
The biggest crystals I have ever seen!!
Pyrite stones.
Piles of rocks.
Some rough stones look better when they're wet. A spray bottle of water is handy so you can truly see the color and shine of the stones even before it is polished.
Some vendors display their rocks in buckets of water so you can see their full potential.
An unpolished Australian opal may look like a plain rock when dry, but run a wet finger over the surface and the opal's iridescent qualities magically appear.
The textures of some of the rocks are just utterly amazing.
I was loving this bubbling green specimen.
Pyrite is one of my favorite. The geometric, cubistic natural form of pyrite I find fascinating.
A pile of colorful bricks. Can you imagine a "brownstone" in Brooklyn constructed out of these? Would be rather funky!
Broken bricks—chromatic pieces, vivid dust.
Afghanis might just be the most skilled in stringing the teeniest of beads.
Precision with the needle must take practice to string up beads as tiny as some of these.
The Afghani beads are so small and fine that you need at least dozen strands for them to make a big statement.
One vendor, Sandy Schor, displayed vintage glass beads in a beautiful rainbow ombre. Red beads, pink beads, purple beads...
Blue beads, green beads, yellow beads...
Semi-precious stone carvings of parrot heads. Incredible!
Brazilian green amethyst.
Brazilian tourmaline.
Brazilian emerald.
Brazilian watermelon tourmaline.
Tucson's natural texture, a cacti's spikes! Sharp!!
Tucson sunset.