{"id":13,"date":"2010-12-02T21:23:44","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T02:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cicadajewelrydesign.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/2010\/12\/02\/deep-blue-sea\/"},"modified":"2010-12-02T21:23:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-03T02:23:44","slug":"deep-blue-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/2010\/12\/02\/deep-blue-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Blue Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entrybody\">\n<p>Round two of my blog takes me to a place where I enjoy going to.  The deep blue seas of Santa Maria. Well, actually that would take me to  one of the \u2018most important religious centers\u2019 in Barcelona, Espania.  What I\u2019m talking about is the Santa Maria Aquamarine which comes from  the Brazilian Santa Maria de Itabira Mine. The Santa Maria Aquamarine.  It\u2019s the Ferrari of Aqua\u2019s. If you\u2019re a fan of the Aquamarine, this  specific brand of Aqua is the most sought-after color due to the deep  ocean blue color it has, hence the reference to my title of this blog (I  was a bit creative with that one, I know). Aquamarine is, not too  surprisingly, associated with water, (duh!) hence the \u2018aqua\u2019 in  aquamarine. Anyway, it\u2019s been known as a gem that bring sailors good  luck and fortune. So if you\u2019re willing to trade in that old rabbit\u2019s  foot and go for a more expensive style of luck, the aquamarine is the  gemstone for you!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cicadajewelrydesign.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/10\/aquaroughblog1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-24\" src=\"http:\/\/cicadajewelrydesign.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/10\/aquaroughblog1.jpg?w=300&amp;h=257\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"257\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I came across a nice piece of aquamarine rough that I purchased a  long time ago, and I decided to have a go at it. Any rough you deal  with, you have to map out where you\u2019re slicing and dicing in order to  avoid the inclusions that, a) can crack the stone while pre-forming or  faceting, or b)can bring the value down. After I Google mapped my aqua  rough, I started to slice this thing up in order to get to my next step \u2013  Pre-forming. It\u2019s the next phase when you start to shape the piece of  rough on a lapidary disk. I decided to go with two trillion-cuts and two  cushion-cuts. Take a look at the image below so you get an idea of how  the rough looks like and the preformed aquamarines I just cut. Notice  the deep blue color before I start faceting and opening up windows on  the stone.<\/p>\n<p>I started to facet the aqua and I just went with a standard table and  I decided to cut the pavilion (the bottom of the stone) into a  Portuguese cut (most Brazilian gem cutters like to cut the pavilion this  way, hence the name of the cut). More facets the better. You could cut  it into a step cut which is traditional but what\u2019s done is done and my  word, did the brilliance and the deep ocean blue, Santa Maria color come  out! Don\u2019t mind my photography skills on this piece but it\u2019s one of  those moments that \u2018you have to see it to believe it\u2019 and that\u2019s how  nice this thing came out. In terms of perfection, the aqua has some  small inclusions in it but still a pretty clean stone and a beauty of a  color. So if there are any casual sea entrepreneurs out there reading  this blog, this is the stone to bring you luck out on the \u2018seven seas.\u2019  Till next time\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/cicadajewelrydesign.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/10\/aquablog.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-28\" src=\"http:\/\/cicadajewelrydesign.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/10\/aquablog.jpg?w=300&amp;h=262\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"262\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Round two of my blog takes me to a place where I enjoy going to. The deep blue seas of Santa Maria. Well, actually that would take me to one of the \u2018most important religious centers\u2019 in Barcelona, Espania. What I\u2019m talking about is the Santa Maria Aquamarine which comes from the Brazilian Santa Maria [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/sako\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}