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About 75% of American brides receive a diamond engagement ring.
Jewellery masterpieces. Antique jewellery
Friday, April 29, 2016
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| Historical Jewelry - Ancient Gold, silver, diamond, pearl, enamel ring, ca. 1770, Private Collection. |
#jewelleryfacts365 89/365
Queen Elizabeth II keeps her jewelry collection below Buckingham Palace in a special room roughly the size of an ice rink.
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| Cullinan V |
#naturesgems
Thursday, April 28, 2016
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| Emerald green Brochantite needles to 20 mm Purchased from the late great Gilbert Gauthier. Keobola mine Africa Miniature |
#jewelleryfacts365 88/365 Diamond fact
Occasionally large thefts of diamonds take place. In February 2013 armed robbers carried out a raid at Brussels Airport and escaped with gems estimated to be worth $50m (£32m; 37m euros). The gang broke through a perimeter fence and raided the cargo hold of a Swiss-bound plane. The gang have since been arrested and large amounts of cash and diamonds recovered. (source)
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| The wrecked van used by the gang was found near the scene |
#jewelleryfacts365 87/365 Diamond fact
The most common shape for rough gem quality diamond is the octahedron, which looks like two pyramids back to back. Crystals that are almost perfect in shape and transparency are called glassies.
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| Rough diamond crystal |
Kilby the historical museum and the Cascade waterfall
Last Sunday we felt like travelling. My husband found a place to go to. I did not know much about it except for one thing... that there was a small petting zoo there. It was perfect as our home stay students loved animals.
It turned out to be a Museum of Rural Life. There were a couple of houses and an old store from the 1920th there. There was a small hobby farm and a tin shed there. Not a lot to see really, but a nice place to visit anyway. There were a few goats, sheep and chickens to hand feed, too.
This house is the most interesting one there. This is an old train station with a store inside and a few rooms with old furniture and cloths and some other things.
I did not take any pictures inside that house, but one. I liked the arrangement of these old suitcases:
Here is a hobby farm:
These chickens followed us everywhere as the kids fed them!
They have a nice little garden with really old trees. Love their rhododendron!
The old seesaw! (We tried it too, but you won't see a picture ;)
Picture perfect rural life!
The long johns is what I really tried to take a picture of. Damn wind!
That mountain really makes the landscape:
I could sit here all day looking at this:
Well, the museum was not big at all, so we needed to find what else to do. We went up to the Hemlock ski resort to see if there was snow tubing going on still. It was not...
We stopped for lunch here:
Love the trees' roots by the river!
It was still too early to go home! We noticed a sign for the Cascade waterfall and decided to find it. We really did not know what to expect and how far the waterfall would be from the parking lot. Awesome enough, it was very close. We could use a gravel road or these stairs to go up.
There is a suspension bridge there!
This is how close you can get to the waterfall:
Our students returning:
Even if there were no bridge you could see the waterfall all right:
Video:
I took this picture while standing on the bridge:
We stopped at the Ruskin dam on our way back and had another picnic :) Here is my husband pointing at something. I thought he wanted me to go that way. It turned out he was pointing at a swimmer in the water! As you see we are wearing our jackets, so you can imagine the kind of weather we had that day.
It was a nice little trip! It reminded me of our days in Australia, when we barely had a plan. We would go to see something we knew about, then see a couple of other signs to some waterfalls and turn that way. I wish we did this more often!
Jewellery masterpieces
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
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| The fantastic way of art of XVI century. The extravagant mannerism. The Jewellery of Germany. |
#jewelleryfacts365 86/365 Diamond fact
De Beers and its subsidiaries own mines that produce about 40% of annual world diamond production.
#jewelleryfacts365 85/365 Diamond fact
Diamonds scratch glass, but this does not positively identify a diamond because other materials, such as quartz, also harder than glass and can also scratch it.
#jewelleryfacts365 84/365 Ruby fact
In Burma (a ruby source since at least 600 AD—now called Myanmar), warriors possessed rubies to make them invincible in battle. However, it wasn’t enough to just wear the rubies. They had to insert them into their flesh and make them part of their bodies. (source)
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| Rough ruby crystal |
#jewelleryfacts365 83/365 Emerald fact
Saturday, April 23, 2016
In some legends of King Arthur, the Holy Grail is described as being fashioned from an emerald.
#jewelleryfacts365 82/365
Jet jewelry even before Victorian times was used to make mourning jewelry, but it is closely associated with the Victorian era, especially in jewelry after the death of Prince Albert.
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| Whitby Jet Mourning Parure from the British Museum |
#jewelleryfacts365 80/365 Emerald fact
The soothing green color of the emerald was thought to be restful to the eyes when they had been under much strain. This was such a common belief that gem workers would keep emeralds on their work bench for the special purpose of resting their eyes upon them after many hours of close work on other gems.(source)
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| Emerald earrings |
#jewellerymasterpieces 19th century bracelet
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
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| Gem set and diamond armlet, second half of 19th century Designed as a repoussé work band of scroll and zoomorphic motifs, set with various gemstones including emeralds, rubies, amethysts, circular-cut and rose diamonds, inner circumference approximately 470mm. |
#jewelleryfacts365 79/365 Gold facts
For the Inka and other peoples of the Andean region of South America, gold was the "sweat of the sun," the most sacred of all deities.
Behind the scene. How we made the map of Middle-Earth. Guest post by VZBRELO
We have another guest post by the VZBRELO girls today (see all their guest posts here). This map is a masterpiece, no question! It is hard to imagine how much work went into it! If you are a fan of Frodo the hobbit you might have already recognized the map of Middle-Earth. Would you like to see how it was made? Then keep reading!
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Hi all! Tatiana and Maria are here again! We have finished one of our biggest projects and would like to show how we made it. This a map of Middle-Earth. We love working on the maps!
We did not start taking pictures right away, but that did not matter too much. The first steps are hard to photograph. We got the map, then Maria prepared it for the pyrography process, then she cut out a piece of plywood for it. The size of the map was going to be 40 by 50 cm (15" by 20").
We printed the map and spent a whole whack of time transferring it to the plywood using carbon paper. It is hard not to forget every small detail!
Then we spent even more time for the pyrography process itself.
Any old map (especially a fantasy map) has the warn down edges. This is how they look like in our mind:
Ok, that looked way too boring and way too clean for an old map. It clearly needed more shades, toning and aging.
We went through all the details three times to make sure that we did not forget anything (of course, we forgot and needed to add a few missing details). Then we coated the map with the lacquer. The work needed to be dried thoroughly after each coating and then sanded.
Voila! The map is ready! We just needed to add two hooks on the back and that was it. We are not sure how much time we have spent to make it. It felt like it was much longer than we expected. It is ok though, as we are happy with the result :)
The map is packaged and ready to be sent to the customer to Saint-Pittsburgh, Russia!
If you are interested to see more details, visit our Facebook page or VK page. Our previous map you can find here.
We are always happy to new guests and friends:
Our VZBRELO community (Russian)
Online shop (Russian), another online shop (Russian)
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