Seeing Smoky? It's a Good Thing!

Yesterday when I was driving home from the studio at about 6:15 my extremely accurate car thermometer said that the temperature was 101 degrees Fahrenheit. This is jewelry-making weather because the only thing that makes sense is to stay inside under an air-conditioner. It's even too hot to lie around in the pool since the water there is as hot as any bathwater!
Dreaming of water, however, I made the first aquamarine bracelet with some great new aquamarine nuggets that I just got in from Thailand. They are a lovely mostly opaque shade of blue with very little green to them. In one of those rare cased of serendipity, I'd just received some lampwork beads from bead artist Lynn Nurge in the same colour, but with a bit of an opal look to them (but not iridiscent). I love Lynn Nurge's beads for bracelets since she handmakes tiny little beads that are as perfect as anything handcrafted can be.

I've also been working with smoky (smokey) quartz this week since the colour brown is big this Fall, and I've gotten in some great cuts of smoky quartz. I still have a tendency to want to call it smoky topaz since that it the way that people I knew referred to it when I was growing up, but what I'm using is quartz.

Smoky quartz is a very sparkling stone when faceted because it is usually transparent and it really almost sparkles like Swarovski does. It is a surprisingly versatile gemstone which blends well with other gemstones and is at home with many different colours in one's wardrobe. I especially like to wear it with lighter colours, white, cream, pale blue, pale peach and pink.
The necklace that you see here is almost all faceted topaz stones with the addition of some great lampwork beads (from a favourite artist of mine) in the colours of brown cream and silver. I especially like the large briolettes such as the one in the pendant here.
The bracelet below has matching lampwork beads which are by Tennessee lampworker Teresa Turner.
Found on the Smoky Quartz Jewelry page.
Finally, I read a review that I didn't know had been done about my blog yesterday, and while the jewelry received good reviews and the writing, the reviewer said that the black background of my blog didn't work, that it drove her crazy as did the green print (I guess she just read one entry since I do change colours). I'm taking her advice and using white print this time, but I'm wondering: how many of you find that you don't like the black background? Should I change to another, lighter colour? I'll publish your comments although because of the inordinately large amount of spam I get I do look at them first, and if the black background is bad, I'll change it!
Thanks - and everyone stay cool!

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