Please come visit us at the St. Gregory the Great Craft Show in Hamilton NJ!
Saturday March 3rd, 2012
9AM – 3PM
St. Gregory the Great Parish Community Center
4680 Nottingham Way
Hamilton, NJ 08690
Feb 062012
Jan 312012
I do a lot of drilling of stones and sea glass to make many of the pieces we have on our website. However it is always something I dread when I need to drill a geode, quartz or anything that is hard over mohs hardness of 6.5. The reason I dread this is because the drilling can take up to 10 minutes depending on the thickness of the piece. I am using a simple setup of drilling with a diamond coated drill bit and manually drilling the piece. It seems to take a long time to get through any of these pieces. So I can across something called a diamond core drill bit. Basically it is the same drill bit coated with diamonds but has a hole through the center that is also coated with diamonds. I decided to give this a try – here is a picture of the diamond core drill bit I bought:
Diamond Coated Core Drill Bit
This drill bit is 1.5mm so I could drill through some geodes I had ready to be made into pendants. I gave it a try and was absolutely stunned when I was able to get through the first geode within about 30 seconds. It was one that I had started drilling months back and gave up because my drill bit was almost burnt out. I was only half way through it so I put it off to the side. I tried another one and again got through it within a minute. All told, I was able to drill through about 5 geodes within 5 minutes. Not bad at all! Now that the geodes are drilled, be on the look out for new Geode Druzy Pendants in our store!
We are doing a GIVE-AWAY! Once we hit 500 likes on our Facebook page we will be giving away one of the pendants in our 2012 – 500 Likes on Facebook GIVE-AWAY album. All you need to do is like our page at http://www.facebook.com/VAELDesigns and once we hit 500 likes, we will choose a winner at random from those who like our page. One lucky winner will get their choice of either our geode pendant or our Yowah opal pendant listed below!
Choice 1 - Yowah Opal and Matrix Pendant
Choice 2 - Agate Druzy Geode Pendant
Already like our Facebook page? Don’t worry! You are already entered so help spread the word and share this post!
Jan 282012
One of the challenges we face with engraving is finishing a beautiful engraved jewelry charm and then seeing that something is wrong with the wording, centering or just overall position. The molds we now made that we talk about here really did help once we had a consistent setup file on our GEM-RX engraving machine. However, from time to time we have to do a new setup and have the need to “test” the engraving before actually engraving the piece. Since we are fairly new to engraving, we had no idea how to overcome this issue so we sacrificed a charm or two as test pieces and just sanded off the previous engraving to test the new setup. It was time consuming to do this and there had to be a better way, so off I went to figure this out.
After a few searches on the internet, I saw people referencing engraving tape, but no one seems to sell it and I could not tell if that really did what I needed. So, I embarked on an adventure and decided to experiment a bit. I took plain old packing tape, the clear thicker kind to see if I could use that as a coating over the piece. I knew I needed to make an impression on something but it had to be thick enough to not go through to the metal. Therefore, I took 4 pieces of the packing tape and put them on top of each other, creating a much thicker piece of tape. I then put it over the piece I was trying to engrave and cut it to size, just like I had coated the piece with plastic. I put the piece in the jig, pushed the engraving button and held my breath as it did the engraving on the piece. Once done, it was perfectly clear and I could see what it actually looked like engraved which was very impressive. I carefully peeled back the tape to find it did not even mar or scratch the metal underneath. I am putting this tidbit out there in hope this may help someone else!
Don’t forget to check out our cancer awareness bracelet line in which you can add your own custom engraved heart charm!
Yesterday was a beautiful day here in NJ but it was COLD! I do not believe it went above freezing yesterday and if it did, it was brief and only a few degrees. We decided to take a drive down to the shore to check up on things and see the beaches and if there were any treasures waiting to be found. We were quite surprised to see a bunch of folks walking on the beaches as the wind just went right through you. First we started at the bay side:
Ice that looed like broken glass from a distance
The wind whipped right through you if you walked the wrong way and at the waters edge looked like there was a ton of sea glass. After closer inspection, I found that it was little pieces of ice that were forming as the waves hit the cold sand. I decided to continue to walk down the beach as it was pebbled covered, to see if there was anything worth while. The first thing I saw was a piece of green beach glass just waiting to be picked up:
Green Beach Glass on The Bay Beaches in Cape May County
My ears started to feel like they were about to fall off from the wind, so I have to remember next time to bring a hat or ear muffs when it is that cold out. Sometimes even in the spring the wind is so chilling that you need something to cover your ears, so imagine below freezing weather with a nice strong wind hitting you in the face! Before I turned around to go back, I saw something sparkling in the sun:
Cape May Diamond Shining in the Sun
Hard to see in this picture but there was a nice clear Cape May Diamond in the center of the picture next to another semi-translucent Cape May Diamond. When they are dry, they look slightly frosted but still let the sun light through as they are transparent and it catches your eye! Sometimes at sunset you can see them better because they look like glowing stones. After this nice find I headed back to a warmer place but not before noticing that further down the beach the foam I thought was the foam from the waves was actually all ice:
Ice Foam on the Bay in Cape May County
That was all I needed to see to head back home to warmth! Spring cannot come come soon enough!
Jan 092012
A while back we purchased a nice GEM-RX engraving machine and when all our excitement over the machine was faded, the machine just sat. It sat some more, and a little more until we decided to offer engraving services for our awareness line. However, we had a problem with getting the pretty flat sterling silver heart to stay in the same spot every time. What that meant was that I had to do an entirely new setup file every single time to make sure the engraving was perfect. And in the beginning, there were a lot of do overs because the heart was not in the exact position. I ordered different jigs all over the place and even tried to carve one of the plastic jigs to fit my hearts. In the end, there seemed to be no jig that fit my little pretty sterling silver hearts just right.
I thought about how to fix this as I knew I could not offer these hearts with engraving with all the work that was going into it behind the scenes. Then, a light bulb went off! AH HA! I took a wonderful course and the instructor had made a little handle for a needle using something like Jett Sett. I had used it a few times prior to hold my work but it did not work well for me so the can was put somewhere safe (aka…lost) and out of site. I was not sure exactly how I was going to make use out of it, but I gave it a try. It took a few times but what I ended up doing is making a nice flat thick oval out of the Jett Sett. I than carefully placed the jet set on my current metal jig on the engraving machine. First problem was that it was immediately setting because of the cold metal. So I decided to retry again by making a nice flat over and pressing my charm to be engraved into it. I also had to dig a channel underneath the charm so it could be easily removed. I then carefully lined up the charm so it was straight and placed the Jett Sett into the meta jig on the engraving machine. I pushed the Jett Sett so it would push through some of the holes in the jig so it would never move and stay in the same place every time. It took some retries to make sure my charm was able to “snap” in place and be taken out but after that, I had myself a custom jig!
Since I created this custom jig, I have been able to follow suit with others and it had made a huge difference in the ability to add engravings to our Cancer Awareness Bracelets. Once I had the setup completed, I was able to engrave without much issues so we added the engraved flat heart charm as an option for ordering our awareness bracelets. We are still expanding what we can do with the engraving machine, so if you have ideas, let us know!
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To start off the Holiday shopping season, we have put up a coupon code that is good for 10% your entire order. Put in JEWELS2011 in the coupon box and select the Redeem button during the checkout process.
We have been adding inventory daily so please check back often as we have some great items that make perfect gifts for the holiday season. Here are just a few!
Pink Waterdrop Pearl Pendant
This beauty is a fresh water cultured pearl drop in natural pinksh purplish color. This large pearl drop is simply yet elegant at the same time and would make a perfect gift for that someone special!
Pyritized Ammonite Necklace
A piece of history right here on this necklace! This is a gorgeous pyritized ammonite that we have wire wrapped for a necklace. These ammonites are from millions and millions of years ago that have been not only fossilized, but over the years they were replaced with pyrite and their chambers filled with exquisite pyrite crystals. Certainly a one of a kind piece as no ammonite is exactly the same!
Pink Flower and Maroon Glass Lampwork Bead Bracelet
This stunning glass lampwork bracelet is made with Swarovski Crystal and handcrafted lampwork beads. The beads are created by a lampwork artist who has carefully crafted delicate pink flowers onto a deep maroon base bead. This would make a wonderful gift!
Come on over to the St. Gregory The Great Fall Craft Show as we will be a vendor there. Stop on by our booth and say hi and check out all the new items we have!
See the details below:
Saturday • November 12
9:00 am – 3:00 pm
4680 Nottingham Way • Hamilton Sq
St. Gregory the Great Fall Craft Show
Quality Crafts and Products
Sweet and Savory Food Tables
Breakfast and Lunch Available
All Day!!
Door Prizes and 50/50
Admission•$3
Children Under 10•FREE
Sponsored by St.Gregory the Great PTA
• All proceeds to benefit the children of St. Gregory the Great School •
Come to the Euphemia Gallery in downtown Hightstown and see our VAEL Designs display during their Art Opening “Prelude to Summer” TODAY from 5PM- 9PM 6/4.
The Euphemia Gallery is located at 200 North Main Street in Hightstown, NJ 08520. The event will start at 5PM today, 6/4, and go on until 9PM. Come check it out!
From Euphemia Gallery’s Facebook Page:
“Art opening featuring abstract artist Anthony Fearron, floral and garden pastels by Susan Winter, metal sculptor Glenn Murgacz, Dawn Arena, whose art is influenced by nature and surroundings, oils by renowned artist Joe Gyrucsak, Dara Alter, and quilt art by Kathryn Forbes.
Reception entertainment by international jazz musician Sue Giles.”
Come visit us this year at the 34th Annual Cape May Promenade Craft Show on the boardwalk in Cape May, NJ.
The show will run Saturday August 13th from 10 AM to 5 PM and Sunday August 14th from 10 AM to 5 PM.
VAEL Designs will be there showing off our treasures we have found on the beach made into beautiful pieces of jewelry that make a perfect keepsake for your special vacation in Cape May! Check out our newest additions from our hand cut cabochons, seaglass jewelry and photos, cancer awareness jewelry to our new stalactite necklaces!
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