Carved pearls with gemstone bead centers

Here's an interesting new take on artistic pearl jewelry, invented by Chi Huynh of San Dimas, California: The Galatea Mercy Pearl, a cultured pearl with a gemstone bead at its center.

What are cultured pearls?

Cultured pearls are grown in mollusks that live in either saltwater  or freshwater. Cultured saltwater pearls are made by placing spherical irritants -- typically pieces of shell -- into the tissues of sea oysters. This process results in pearls that are very round and have a beautiful translucent glow, called luster.

Read more about the different types of pearls used in jewelry making.

How is the Galatea Mercy Pearl different?

In these patented pearls, real gemstone beads are used as the irritants that encourage nacre to form within mollusks. The artist carves down through the nacre to reveal the gemstone within.

In the photo above, what looks like a blue layer is actually a round turquoise bead. This example also features an embedded diamond, another of Galatea's specialties.

According to Galatea, this is the first time in history that cultured pearls have been successfully grown with gemstone centers:

In 2005, Huynh began setting up a pearl farm in his native Viet Nam to harvest the Mercy Pearl in the country’s coastal waters. The oysters are first enucleated with perfectly round gemstone beads such as turquoise, amethyst, garnet, citrine and opal and left to grow for almost a year to obtain its luxurious nacre or exterior coating.

So far, it looks like Galatea Mercy Pearls are primarily being used in settings. We'll have to wait and see whether they turn up in any luxurious strung designs.

Related Beadjewelry.net posts:

• Pearl terms and shapes
• How to knot between beads (e.g., pearls)
• Book review: Create Jewelry ~ Pearls

Rings & Things annual jewelry and design contest

If you'd like to participate in the 2010 Your Designs Rock Contest, now's the time to start planning your entry. This popular event is sponsored by Rings & Things, a big supplier of beads and jewelry making components. But entries aren't limited to jewelry designs -- you're free to submit a wall hanging, sculpture, item of decor, or just about anything else you can think of, as long as a majority of its components were purchased from Rings & Things.

About ordering from Rings & Things

Rings & Things is a wholesale supplier in the sense that it has a total minimum order requirement of $25, and charges a $4 processing fee on orders between $25 and $50. However, anyone can shop there. You can order through their Web site, by phone, by regular mail, or by fax. You can also purchase their catalog, or request one for free with your first $50 order.

Contest prizes

This year's Grand Prize is $750 in Rings & Things credit. There will also be a First Prize of $150 credit in each of five categories, and Honorable Mentions will each receive $75 credits. As an added perk, some winning entries may be featured in future issues of the Rings & Things catalog and promotions, with credit given to the artist -- which means potential exposure to an audience of about one million people.

Entry categories

Here they are:

• Glass and crystal
• Mostly metal
• Found objects and miscellaneous
• Gemstones
• Metal clay

Deadlines and more helpful info

Entries will be accepted between January 1, 2010, and
February 28, 2010 (<---That's your deadline).

All the info you need to participate is available on the Rings & Things website. Here are the most helpful links:

Main contest description page

Contest guidelines

FAQs

Previous winners

Have fun with this one, and good luck!

Beaded dog leashes (?)

A jewelry company has introduced a strung-bead dog leash that it says is strong enough to serve as, well, a dog leash.

It's a difficult concept for us beaders to grasp, but the makers of FabuLeash claim to have invented a patent-pending technology that makes it work.

Most FabuLeashes are made with acrylic beads, but there's also a limited "Haute Collection FabuLeash, made with Crystallized by Swarovski elements."

Oh my.

The leashes are supposedly strong enough to handle 50 pounds of pull force -- much less than any of my dogs exerts, but I don't think my dogs are the target market for dainty jeweled leashes. ;) There's no word yet on how thick the stringing material is, or what it's made of.

If the creator of FabuLeash really has invented a bead stringing material strong enough to be a dog leash, I wonder if they realize its market potential in the jewelry making field?

Would you consider using it, and what would you use it for?

To learn more about the standard varieties of stringing material available to jewelry makers, see Chapter 3 of TYV Jewelry Making & Beading or Chapter 2 of Beading Quick Tips.

Etsy's 302 redirect search engine change

If you sell on Etsy, you may be aware that the site has had some challenges when it comes to search engine ranking. Controversy erupted earlier in the year when changes to shop code temporarily caused shops to violate some important search engine rules.

Photo credit: MisterBisson on Flickr

Those mistakes were corrected, and Etsy took the additional step of hiring a search engine optimization (SEO) firm to review its overall search engine strategy.

One of the issues identified by the firm relates to how Etsy creates links to your shop. Until this week, shop URLs were configured as "302 redirects," which search engines interpret as temporary, rather than permanent, pages. 

That was a problem because it kept search engines from recognizing all of your shop's inbound links -- the sites that link to your shop. And that number affects your search engine ranking, called PageRank on Google.

The correction should, over time, give your shop's ranking a better chance of improvement. Of course, you still need quality inbound links to your shop. But be careful -- links from sites that the search engines define as "link farms" can actually lower your ranking.

When you do provide your link to other sites, be sure to use the new URL format of http://www.etsy.com/shop/username.

If you have questions about the change, check out Etsy's FAQs here.

Update on Sunday, November 1, 2009 at 12:50PM by beadjewelry

While doing some research for my book today, I looked a little closer at Google PageRank. It turns out not to be as important as we site owners tend to assume it is. So, even though Etsy's redirect change may be helpful, it probably won't do a whole lot to improve your chances of being found on Google.

Here's more, straight from Google's FAQ page:

Q: My site's PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months!
A: Don't worry. In fact, don't bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's useful for you as a site owner. If you're looking for metrics, we'd encourage you to check out Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.

Ceramic bead artists schedule online open studio event

The Beads of Clay blogging group is holding a collaborative open studio tour on Sunday -- and all you need to attend is an Internet connection. The Beads of Clay Studio Blog Event will begin at 10am Pacific time on October 25 and run until 1pm Pacific.

At least seventeen artists will participate. There will be blog chats, free give-aways to commenters, photo tours of artists' studios, and special sales.

Here's the official schedule of events, which I've converted into Pacific time for my fellow west-coasties:

• 10am PST (1pm): Meet the artists ~ Individual artists welcome visitors to their blogs.
• 10:45am (1:45pm): Picture posting of 1st giveaway prizes.
• 11:00 am (2pm): First commenter winner giveaway announced.
• 11:15am (2:15pm): Open studios ~ Photo tours of the artists' studios.
• 12:00pm (3:00pm): Picture posting of 2nd giveaway prizes.
• 12:15pm (3:15pm): Second commenter winner giveaway announced.
• 1:00 pm (4:00pm) End of event; but sales prices remain in effect until 9:00pm (12:00am).

If you're interested in ceramics, take advantage of this opportunity to mingle online with some experienced designers. I myself plan to drop in Sunday morning and see how it's all going.