I've made a few Mohave Purple Turquoise necklaces and bracelets and thought they needed some earrings to go with them. For this pair I made a couple of matching fancy coiled links to suspend from my Mohave Purple Turquoise beads, assembled everything then antiqued and polished them.
Mohave Purple Turquoise is a byproduct of turquoise mining. It's produced by taking the turquoise scraps from stone cutting, grinding some into powder and leaving some in small chunks. It sometimes has metals like bronze added into the mix, its then dyed. The harder turquoise stone doesn't accept the dye & the softer stone takes the dye so you have a beautiful multicolored stone and virtually no waste in the process. I think it's a neat way to up-cycle what would be wasted and a great use of resources. This process also gives consumers unusual semi precious gemstones.
Mohave Purple Turquoise is a byproduct of turquoise mining. It's produced by taking the turquoise scraps from stone cutting, grinding some into powder and leaving some in small chunks. It sometimes has metals like bronze added into the mix, its then dyed. The harder turquoise stone doesn't accept the dye & the softer stone takes the dye so you have a beautiful multicolored stone and virtually no waste in the process. I think it's a neat way to up-cycle what would be wasted and a great use of resources. This process also gives consumers unusual semi precious gemstones.
My second pair of earrings uses the same Mohave Purple Turquoise beads with a different fancy link that matched a bracelet I'd made. Both sold very quickly so I'd better get to work on making a few more!
This Mohave Purple Turquoise came from Colbaugh Processing, the miners and producers of Kingman Turquoise just outside of Kingman Arizona. We are fortunate enough to live a couple of hours away from Kingman so we can go directly to the mine when we want to shop for Turquoise.
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