Baubles, bangles and beads

Ever wonder where all those nice turquoise stones came from, the ones everyone around here makes stuff with? I'll tell you. Santa Fe Jewelers Supply.

I love stores like this. Art supply stores, hardware stores, cookware stores, anyplace that has lots of little tools and interesting, useful, yougottahaveone things. I wanted to experiment with mounting a drawing on mylar, to a piece of plexiglas, and then framing it. In order to do this, I needed tiny fasteners. So off I went to SFJS.

I was helped by a very nice woman there who did not blink when I told her what I was trying to do. In fact she had very good ideas and was totally supportive. You'd think that since I was clueless about jewelry supplies, and I wasn't making jewelry at all, she might have scoffed. But she didn't. So I bought these head pins that are used for stacking beads on earrings (I could choose between solid silver, silver plate, and nickel,) a tiny drill bit, an insert for the drill to hold the tiny drill bit, and a pair of needle nose pliers. It cost about $15 altogether.

I was fascinated by all the stuff they had there. You can see in the photo that there were many strings of semi-precious stones, but they also had cases full. They had mother of pearl still on the shell. There were large stones and small ones, and there was someone doing something with stones on a machine, but I didn't ask what he was doing. There was a nice looking man at the counter and I intended to take the photo while he was looking in the case, but he turned just as the phone camera snapped (which as you probably know if you have an iphone, is an eon after you push the button.) I thought he was native American and so I blocked out his face because it seemed wrong to put it on the internets.

This is the kind of thing you can find easily in Santa Fe. But try finding a decent dermatologist.