ammolite

That stone is amazing! Great wrap! I'm afraid to even look into the cost of the stone.

Ang

amazing stone... and even more amazing wrap. great job Kim. very elegent and flowing.

Wow Great work.!!! Is that particular wire wrapping design yours or did you learn that from someplace else? I have some square cabs that might look good in that design.

Great job regardless

Steve

beautiful stuff looks like the sparkly stuff in opals or the stuff that peaks out of boulder opals! Great wrap too!

What's the circular shell called I thought that was an ammolite?

Tweetiepy, the circular shell is the nautilus; it is the modern day descendant of the ammonite. The squid and the octopus are also descended from the ammonite. The gem ammolite comes from ammonites that lived in the Bear Paw Sea. It was located in what is now Alberta Canada. The Bear Paw Sea was cut off from the rest of the ocean and the ammonites there grew to be much larger than in the rest of the world. In addition the Rocky Mountains were volcanically active and dumped a lot of mineral rich ash over the dead ammonites. This along with some geological events transformed and preserved the argonite (mother of pearl part of the shell same stuff that makes up pearls) The preserved shell can be up to several mm thick (before being worked up). Fossilized ammonites from other places in the world only have a paper thin shell layer left or none at all. Also, red and green are the only colors seen in other fossilized ammonites. For those reasons only Alberta fossilized ammonites are called ammolite. Some ammolite is also found in northern Montana, but they came from the same Bear Paw Sea ammolites. I really like the gem (as if you couldn't tell ;D), but it is now more expensive than I can afford. But I can still blab away about for free LOL.

Oh (here I go blabbing on again), the colors are from iridescence which is the effect of light passing through the layers of the preserved shell. Which is different then light reflected out of a gemstone. In some ammolites if you change the direction of view you get a different color. The one Kim did, if you turn it upside down it will look more brown. Kim did a great job get the gem to show its best colors. In the case of this gem the color is directional and is not considered a color changer. If it were to go from green to red then it would be a color changer and not consider to be color directional. The color changers are much more rare only about 5 to 10% of all found. About 50% found are considered hand samples not really intended for jewelry. the next 25% are the color directional gem grade. The Last 25% are a near infinite combination of colors, patterns and color shifts.

Wow! Simply stunning. That wrap looks so elegant and flowing. I like the loop on the side. That stone is cool too.
Steve

Hi Kim,
A real good job on that Ammolite it is so beautifull as someone has said just like opal

You got the raps so close and well spaced a excelent wrap
thanks for showing

Jack
Yorkshire UK