Hi,

I am the House of Gems 'Bead Master', KAR. I write the highly informative House of Gems newsletter and I will be writing here about my musings, beautiful jewlery that I see, great new thing...

Hi Everyone,

Whooo! What a great start for the week.

We opened our email program and there were so many nice comments about our beads, newsletters and servic...

Last night I announced our https://www.houseofgems.com web site, and the fact that I will be lecturing at a Lapidary Journal, sponsored Taming the tigers tail

I get frustrated when poor or bad instructions are passed on. In this case I am talking about beading CABLE (Soft flex, Soft touch, Beadalon, etc.). A cable is a bundle of tiny stainless steel wires that are either twisted or braided around each other. This give...

A few days ago I received an e-mail in response to a series of articles I wrote pertaining to pricing your work. The articles appeared in the houseofgems.com newsletter. In the e-mail, the writer states that she was able to make a necklace, a bracelet, and a pair of ear rings out of a $2...

A few months ago our newsletter ran a series called "The Toughness Scale (for gemstones)." In this series of articles I discussed how tough (not h...

A few days ago, a woman asked me why our House of Gems.Com "Frequent buyer program" only gives a 20% discount off our listed prices, while another vendor she buys from gives her a 50% discount. I asked her, "50% discounted from what base price?" A 20% discount fro...

In my e-mail, today, I received a question from a jewelry designer. Since it should be of interest to many people I am sharing the question and my answer with you. Part of this problem was just discussed in our HouseofGems.com Newsletter

Early Monday morning (4am), my boss and I arrived back at LAX from Bead Fest Atlanta (sponsored by Lapidary Journal and Step by Step Beads). To finish off a wonderful weekend where we met so many wonderful bead addicts, we were stuck in the Atlanta airport for 5 hours beyond our departure time. The airport was closed while thunder, lightning, and rain pounded Atlanta. This left 250 +/- airplane...

In working on descriptions of products for our web site and catalog I was hit with a dilemma. When can a silver object legally be called "Sterling Silver". Sterling Silver is .925 parts silver and .025 parts copper and other metals. See our chart of silver alloys, at:...