Vacation Time

First of all the new turquoise and diamond earrings I posted a picture of in my last post have sold already. It seems if you want my new stuff you have to jump on it quickly. So here is a picture of a new sapphire ring. Unfortunately (despite the fact that I didn't take the picture), the sapphire didn't read well in this shot. (Okay addendendum on 7/1---This is a new version of the picture---color reads a bit better but it's still prettier than this.) I can assure you that it looks a whole lot better in real life. So look at the design and imagine a really stunning, beautiful dark blue sapphire in it.

I am taking a muchly needed vacation for 10 days starting on July 6. Hopefully it will provide some refreshment for my creative spirit (I'm going to the Vineyard for part of it). I should come back with a lot of ideas for waves. Wait a minute, I already do waves in my jewelry. Oh well. I'll find some inspiration somewhere. This will be my final posting until I return.

Edit: What's Going On

Here's something I put together earlier this morning, it feels pretty nice to get something laid down after a long & hectic month.

Marvin gaye - what's going on (b.cause success edit) by djbcause

Kelly Bensimon Picks Jewelry Over Jellybeans

Jewelry and the New York Housewives go together like pinot grigio and 'turtle time' - so it comes as no surprise that Hamptons hottie, Kelly Bensimon, is adding more trinkets to her celebrity jewelry line.

While Bensimon described her previous jewelry offering as 'Pocahontas goes to the disco' (huh?), her recent bauble collection has a more bodacious provenance:

"One of the most influential icons for me has always been Raquel Welch," Bensimon, 42, tells UsMagazine.com in a statement. "Wrapped in suede and golden-tanned skin, Welch in One Million B.C. epitomized raw beauty."

The creatively named, "Kelly by Kelly Killoren Bensimon" collection mixes metals, leather, feathers and crystals and ranges from $50 to $150 at Intermix stores across the country.

Bensimon also designed a limited number of baubles for charity, with 100% of the proceeds going to Feeding America.

At least she's not dropping a dance tune.

Dragons in the Forest

A very hot weekend camping in the New Forest. Insects weren't quite as numerous or varied as the same time last year (also very hot) but some interesting sightings. I also had my first Bird's Wing moth and singles of Silver-washed Fritillary, White Admiral and Firecrest.

Keeled Skimmer Orthetrum coerulescens


Beuatiful Demoiselle Calopteryx virgo


Common Lizard Zootoca vivipara


Oblong-leaved Sundew Drosera intermedia


Canon Powershot SX10

Dries Van Noten: Menswear Spring 2011

"snow-washed" - denim that had been bleached to within an inch of its blueness.

Terra cotta, Creamy tawny beige, crisp white shirts. Button up. Azure-blue acid washed denim. Cornflower blue acid washed denim. Check. Navy. Fulvous leather. Jonquil.

Celebrity Engagement Ring Blitz

Cupid is making the rounds in celebrity-land this month, giving we jewelry hounds a cornucopia of diamond carats to count.

First and foremost - we've got another royal wedding on our hands. Huzzah! HRH Prince Albert of Monaco finally parted ways with his bachelor lifestyle by proposing to Olympic swimmer, Charlene Wittstock, with what appears to be a 3-carat pear-shaped diamond stunner (see Jewelry.com's report for more diamond details).


Next up? Our favorite swashbuckling elf, Orlando Bloom, is breaking hearts with news of his engagement to model, Miranda Kerr. A rep at the Diamond Information Center told Us Kerr's ring is an oval diamond set on a white gold or platinum band weighing in at an estimated 3-4 carats with a price as high as $65,000.

Ugly Betty may have lost the ratings war, but its star won big in the end with her recent engagement to longtime beau, Ryan Piers Williams. Reports put the carat count of the round center stone at 4 with an estimated price tag of around $70 large.


Finally? Vienna Miller's diamond engagement ring is making news because, well, it's still on her ring finger. Reports are swirling that Bachelor, Jake Pavelka, kicked her to the curb after discovering she was cheating on him while he was away on business.

If you didn't see that one coming, I have some beach property in the Gulf I'd like to show you.

And if prior Bachelor break-ups are any indication, she won't be wearing the 2-carat Neil Lane diamond much longer. The show's producers get back the bling once the honeymoon's over.

Are there any other recent celebrity betrothals I'm missing? Weigh in!

How About Some Feedback

I know that some people out there are actually reading my blog because I routinely get customers in who said they read it. But honestly guys, I'd really love some feedback. Any and all comments are appreciated. Is there something you've found helpful? Is there a posting you hated? Is there something you'd like me to write about? Is there something you don't want me to write about? Would you like to see more pictures of something? Please let me know. And become a follower too! By the way I also can be found on Facebook and I have a fan page for my store as well. Join up and become a fan!

Pictured above are some new 18k gold, turquoise and diamond earrings.

King's Dyke West

A fairly standard bunch of insects this lunchtime in cooler, cloudier weatehr than expected. In addition to those shown here there were Black-tailed Skimmers, Four-spotted Chasers, egg-laying Emperor Dragonfly and Blue-tailed Damselflies.

Most of these shots are from the zoom and crop school of insect photography, hence the rather variable quality.

Large Skipper Ochlodes faunus


Emerald Damselfly Lestes sponsa



Common Blue Damselfly Enallagma cyathigerum


Common Darter Sympetrum striolatum


Ruddy Darter Sympetrum sanguineum


Harlequin Ladybird Harmonia axyridis f. succinea


Canon Powershot SX10

Diamond Soccer Ball Bling

In honor of USA's brilliant World Cup win today, I thought I'd post this little diamond ditty to tickle your football fancy.

South African jeweler, Yair Shimansky, created the world's most brilliant soccer ball to draw attention to his brand during the World Cup festivities, and the result is a black and white dazzler worth a whopping $2.6 million.


The five-pound ball is covered in 6,620 white and 2,640 black round brilliant cut diamonds, all sourced in South Africa, for a grand total of 3,500 carats.

Replicas rendered in crystals will be in Shimansky's seven national stores for the duration of the World Cup and will be auctioned after the festivities, with proceeds going to charity.

In the meantime, that's not the only World Cup winner that's easy on the eyes. I'll be glued to the TV as Team USA enters the next round - the first time we've made it this far since 1930!

USA! USA! USA!

Anne Hathaway's Jewelry Up for Auction

When your boyfriend brings you diamond jewelry like it's your morning latte, you know you've hitched your wagon to one keeper of a pony.

Unless you're Anne Hathaway.

The Cinderella story of Miss Anne and her uber-rich boyfriend Raffaello Follieri hit a snag back in 2008 when he was convicted of 14 felony counts of fraud, so the Feds are trying to recoup his losses Bernie Madoff-style by auctioning off anything and everything he owned - including the jewelry he gave to Anne.

Hathaway, who broke up with then-arrested Follieri in June 2008, turned the items over to the FBI that August, including two watches, two rings, two bracelets, two necklaces, two chains, silver earrings, and a Louis Vuitton box. While the jewelry's total value has not been disclosed, a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona given to Hathaway retails for about $25,000.

But all's well that ends well. Follieri is serving a 4/12 year sentence, and A-lister Annie's only crime is her performance in Valentine's Day.

What would you do with jewelry given to you by a lying, cheating ex? This excellent site, www.exboyfriendjewelry.com ("You don't want it, he can't have it back!") has the perfect answer - and a brilliant business plan. Check it out!

Mokume Gane

I've spent some time recently looking over some other jeweler's blogs and once again had my feelings reinforced about what I don't want my blog to become. Almost universally, they are discussions of a piece recently made, usually with pictures of the work in progress. Now this is all well and good. I'm sure that a lot of people are intrigued by how jewelry is made and it's great self promotion to show what goes into making the items we produce as jewelers. But generally speaking, it's not the direction I like to go in. I prefer to talk about my MOTIVATION for making a piece. I also like to talk about subjects that I think will help my customers buy any piece of jewelry (not just mine). But today I'm going to throw all that out the window and talk about one of the techniques I use to actually make some of my pieces. Why? Because I said I would in my last posting.

Mokume gane is a Japanese metal layering technique that has been used for thousands of years in making both jewelry and ornamental objects. Mokume means woodgrain and gane means metal so the description is woodgrain metal. That is exactly what a lot of it can look like. It used to be that almost all mokume gane work was done with a variety of less expensive metals, copper, silver and a number of oddball alloys that the Japanese had developed. More recently it has been done with precious metals. There are some jewelers who specialize in mokume gane and do some absolutely stunning things with it. They have taken the technique to whole new levels. Using ovens to carefully bond their metals together over long periods of time, they have come up with some new ways of using mokume and a variety of new looks for it. With modern advances in technology, their ability to produce perfect billets of mixed metals to work with is impressive.

However I don't want to spend my entire life doing one process. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I can please so many different types of customers is because I work in a variety of styles. While some of my work is immediately recognizable as mine, a lot of it is just nice jewelry. And that's what I like to do. I'd be bored to tears if all I did was one particular technique. So I leave that for the other jewelers who specialize in it, but I do have a particular mokume that I enjoy making and that I produce routinely.

Basically what you do in mokume gane is create a piece of metal with a large number of layers of different colors of metal and then peel away parts of it to see the layers underneath. I do this by starting with a piece of my special 22k yellow gold mix and a piece of the 18k palladium white gold I use. I've found these two metals fuse together better than some others, given the conditions I'm working in. I then fuse the two layers together using my torch in a process in which I heat the two metals until they are almost liquid and they actually fuse together. Then I cut the piece in half and fuse them again. I do this until I get either 16 layers or 32 layers of metal. This metal is then rolled down (in a mill) until it is fairly thin. I then take a dapping die (a small tool I use with a hammer that has a ball on the end) and punch out a series of rows of holes (they don't go all the way through) in the metal. The piece is then flipped over and ground off on the top. This allows the different layers to show through.

I really enjoy making mokume gane because it involves a lot of torch work (I admit, I have somewhat of a fascination with working with a lot of fire) and it is just generally fun for me to do. It's technically advanced (trying to get the metal to fuse properly with a torch is tricky---most mokume today is produced in controlled ovens), it's always a little different and I can do some neat things with the results.

In the three ring picture only the top ring is mokume gane. That is a 32 layer mix. The earrings are a 16 layer mix.

Vogue Russia July 2010 by Terry Tsiolis

Gold Spot

Gold Spot was only the second for the garden (the first was in 2005). The Concolorous is a bit of a local speciality. A Red Data Book species that has occurred twice before in the garden.

56 species identified with a further five still to be determined.

Gold Spot Plusia festucae


The Concolorous Photedes extrema


Canon Powershot SX10

0017 Common Swift (Hepialus lupulinus) 2
0937 Agapeta hamana 1
0965 Cochylis hybridella 1
0970 Barred Fruit-tree Tortrix (Pandemis cerasana) 1
0977 Large Fruit-tree Tortrix (Archips podana) 1
0989 Timothy Tortrix (Aphelia paleana) 1
0994 Clepsis consimilana 1
1063 Celypha striana 1
1076 Celypha lacunana 1
1082 Plum Tortrix (Hedya pruniana) 1
1083 Marbled Orchard Tortrix (Hedya nubiferana) 3
1115 Ancylis achatana 1
1201 Eucosma cana 1
1293 Garden Grass-veneer (Chrysoteuchia culmella) 3
1302 Crambus perlella 3
1334 Scoparia ambigualis 1
1376 Small Magpie (Eurrhypara hortulata) 1
1392 Udea olivalis 2
1428 Bee Moth (Aphomia sociella) 1
1485 Phycitodes maritima 1
1705 Dwarf Cream Wave (Idaea fuscovenosa) 1
1711 Treble Brown Spot (Idaea trigeminata) 2
1758 Barred Straw (Eulithis pyraliata) 1
1765 Barred Yellow (Cidaria fulvata) 2
1834 Common Pug (Eupithecia vulgata) 1
1860 Green Pug (Chloroclystis rectangulata) 4
1887 Clouded Border (Lomaspilis marginata) 1
1904 Scorched Wing (Plagodis dolabraria) 2
1906 Brimstone Moth (Opisthograptis luteolata) 2
1931 Peppered Moth (Biston betularia) typical 1
1958 Clouded Silver (Lomographa temerata) 2
1981 Poplar Hawk-moth (Laothoe populi) 1
1991 Elephant Hawk-moth (Deilephila elpenor) 1
2040 Four-dotted Footman (Cybosia mesomella) 1
2050 Common Footman (Eilema lurideola) 1
2060 White Ermine (Spilosoma lubricipeda) 1
2061 Buff Ermine (Spilosoma lubricipeda) 6
2089 Heart & Dart (Agrotis exclamationis) 12
2098 The Flame (Axylia putris) 5
2102 Flame Shoulder (Ochropleura plecta) 2
2107 Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba) 3
2128 Double Square-spot (Xestia triangulum) 1
2283x Dark/Grey Dagger (Acronicta tridens agg.) 2
2321 Dark Arches (Apamea monoglypha) 21
2330 Dusky Brocade (Apamea remissa) 1
2333 Large Nutmeg (Apamea anceps) 5
2337x Marbled Minor agg. (Oligia strigilis agg.) 5
2340 Middle-barred Minor (Oligia fasciuncula) 4
2347 The Concolorous (Photedes extrema) 1
2381 The Uncertain (Hoplodrina alsines) 5
2384 Vine's Rustic (Hoplodrina ambigua) 1
2387 Mottled Rustic (Caradrina morpheus) 1
2422 Green Silver-lines (Pseudoips prasinana) 1
2439 Gold Spot (Plusia festucae) 1
2474 Straw Dot (Rivula sericealis) 2
2489 The Fan-foot (Herminia tarsipennalis) 6