Wednesday 12 October 2022

Back in The Paint Business

The weather has changed and we are now in the crisp, sunny days of fall. For anyone planning a trip to Nova Scotia, this is a great time to come.

 One of the things I really enjoy when visitors come to the shop is showing all the things we actually do. Earlier in the summer we had a visitor who also does lapidary and when I showed him how Vickie made paint from the rock sludge, he said he would send us a piece from his stash and sure enough, he did. It was a fist sized piece of jasper from Africa that was amazingly fine grained and the most beautiful orange/ red colour. After cutting a small slice to use in making some jewelry pieces we proceeded to use the Cab King to grind it down to a fine powder.


Then Vickie got to work collecting the dried rock dust and here is just a fraction of what she was able to get.


She then did a test run to see what quality of paint she could make and was very pleasantly surprised!

Here's how it looked using slightly different mediums and paper.



And with the slice I kept, I was able to make several pieces. Here's a ring showing how beautifully it polished. I'm working on a pendant earring set and will post pics when it is finished.


The dark specks are actually little cubes of pyrite which, depending on the light, show as black or metallic gold.

We are calling it Cox jasper in honour of the donor. Thanks again Bill!



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