Completed [Painted Sky Jewelry] The Peridot Frog I

[Kelski]

.

Timestamp: 91st of Fall, 519 A.V.

“You want what?” The Jeweler asked again, her eyes going wide.

“It’s a simple thing really. I want this raw emerald turned into a gemstone that can sit on the back of a very whimsical ring I want to make for my wife.” The man insisted. “She loves frogs. I’d love to have it as a frog that wraps around her finger holding the gemstone on its back. I want the frog encrusted with pieces of the emerald you cut off to make the pear shape I visualize the back being, sprinkle in a few diamonds I would imagine, and I want it to be realistic. But… I want it to stand freely on its own so she can display it on her jewelry counter in our bedroom when its not in use.” He added, huffing slightly.

Kelski couldn’t imagine who would want anything frog shaped. Sure, they were delicious to eat, but otherwise the creatures were rather repulsive and quite frankly squawked a lot. No… that wasn’t the right word… croak. Croak was right. They croaked and ribbited a lot.

“That’s not an emerald.” The jeweler automatically corrected. “I can tell from here by its yellow hue its most likely a Peridot. Its an Olivine Mineral… quite as valuable as emerald, but brighter and less sultry.” She added. “I have no idea what carat that is… about twenty? But I don’t know how many scraps from when I cut it will be left over to shape into say little peridot crystals to set into such a ring. Won’t it be bulky?” She asked.

The man shook his head. He was some head guild guy in Zeltiva, someone who’d made the trek all the way out here to order the ring once he’d heard a Master Jeweler was about. “She likes things… big, bold, can’t miss it. She’d love this. Frogs are her favorite animal.” He added.

Kelski smiled, but behind the smile was a horrific sense of who in the world liked frogs? “And what kind of metal do you want it made from?” She asked, mentally calculating what such a garish piece would take.

“Gold, of course.” He said, looking like the question was the most retarded thing in the world.

Kelski nodded. “It will cost a pretty miza and take some time. It’s not something I can do overnight. I will have to wax carve the frog, relief cast it, then cut and set the gems. We’re talking a ten day at least.” She added.

“Her birthening day is not until the end of the season. I’d give you until then, but I hate last minute gifts. Lets say twenty days? I want to approve the metal frog once its completed before you set the gems. And if you have to add in your own … peridots… you can.” He said, stumbling over the unfamiliar term.

Personally, Kelski liked Peridots better than Emeralds, because the bold yellow-green stones were happy, bright, and unassuming. Emeralds were preferred by everyone due to their deep rich color, but the Kelvic thought they had a reputation that wasn’t earned.

[Kelski]

.

“So now we need to talk cost.” She said, then named a reasonable figure for her time, trouble and because it was frogs. Kelski told herself she’d rather carve anything but frogs… thus the high cost.

The man laughed. That was never a good sign. “Cost isn’t a factor. I’ll pay what it is worth within reason.” He named a figure that was double what Kelski had stated, and the Kelvic nodded. She had to remind herself that people in Zeltiva were vastly wealthy. She had far more dealings with the Svefra who often bartered than people who had actual coin to burn. However, she needed coin. So, who was she to complain?

Coin was coin.

This man was no exception to the rest of the businessmen in Zeltiva. And if he liked her work, word would spread and her business might go high end. At least, that was Kelski’s hope. Just because they had issues with food didn’t mean they had issues with coin intake. He was most likely as rich as they came, running a guild. Kelski didn’t mind. She had her own guild starting, and knew that eventually coin would flow inward instead of hemorrhaging outward like it was doing now. It was just a matter of time.

“Let me go get my drawing pad.” She said, disappearing upstairs and returning as fast as she could with her sketch pad, paints, and brushes. She sat down and began to carefully sketch out the shape of a frog. “I can have it balanced on its back legs, curved inward to form a comfortable ring, but if I balance it right it can be rearing up with its front legs clasped as well so it has two contact points on her finger… two bands; the front and back legs.” Kelski stood up, pretended to be a frog, and assumed the shape she was thinking of. “I’ll have to go capture a frog myself to have something to study. But there are small common frogs around here and more exotic tree frogs that would make excellent models.” She added, picking up her charcoal sketch pencil again.

“You want other stones, so I will have to make solitaire cut gems and insert them into its skin much like a frog might have warts. I can make them all from the shavings of the peridot, but I do have other peridots of varying colors so we could scatter lighter and darker gems throughout the creatures body – encrusting it with them – and have it be more visually interesting and colorful. It will match more shades of green clothing she wears as well.” Kelski suggested.

The man smiled, nodding. “I think you are starting to see my vision.” He replied, then tapped the parchment sketch page. “I’ll be back in ten days. I’ll give you half down and this rough stone which my wife herself found. She’s something of a rockhound. Then I’ll be back with the other half and to pick up the finished piece.” He added. Kelski nodded, gave him a parchment with the promise of the item – a complete description, and enough leeway to have some artistic license on the piece. He nodded, headed back out, taking the road to Zeltiva, and she got busy.

First things first. She had to acquire some frogs.

[Kelski]

.

The artist in her needed a true to life model to sculpt the piece after. Kelski had never been fond of frogs, though some people swore by them as a food source. It was a waste to her to kill something only for tiny strips of meat down their legs. Sure, if it was a survival situation, she could understand it. But as an everyday food source, no. She knew where to find them though, even though she hadn’t been in the mindset to hunt. She doubted she could actually snatch them out of a pond, so she equipped herself well – filling her magical backpack with a change of clothing, a fine-meshed net, and a rather large jar with holes punched in the lid. Gathering supplies took time… and made her run to the barn more than once to fetch supplies she’d normally use for the horses. She added two deep buckets wooden buckets used to carry grain to the horses, her hand ax, and a small roll of metal flashing they’d used for the roof and had left over. Then, finally, she added a small folding shovel.

Supplies gathered, backpack loaded, Kelski was ready to go.

Kelski was going to approach things two ways. First, she was going to look for frogs and try to find them. Secondly, she was going to build a pit trap for them because she had a lot of gem cutting to do and not a lot of time to do it. Ten days sounded like an eternity, but it really wasn’t. The Guild man would be back before she knew it and she wanted something ready for him.

Stripping out of her clothing and stuffing it in her backpack, she went outside, laid the backpack down, and assumed her Sea Eagle form. She hopped onto the backpack, winged up into the sky carrying the lightweight item thankful for its magical holding capacity. Then she did a circle of the property, looking for a marshy wet area. Kelski made it all the way to the area she’d dubbed deer valley when she found a suitable wetland. Landing hear the shore of a backed-up stream where beavers obviously worked, Kelski saw a likely spot and landed, dropping the light backpack from her talons. She switched back to her human form, dressed, and unpacked the backpack.

The first thing she was going to build was a pit trap for the frogs. She moved a few feet from the water and began digging a hole bigger than the buckets were deep. Once the hole was dug, Kelski pressed the bucket into the ground tucking the rope handle along the edge where the animals couldn’t use the handle to climb out. Frogs could hop, but she pressed the bucket deeper into the ground in it’s ‘pit’ than she figured a small frog could jump out. Then she started digging a thin trench parallel to the water from the edge of the bucket along the bank. She made it as long as the flashing was.

[Kelski]

.

Unrolling the metal flashing, she pressed it down into the trench, creating what was in essence a solid wall that was several feet high from the edge of the bucket along the shore around six feet long. Normal animals, even racoons or squirrels could easily avoid it. However, things like frogs, snakes and lizards would hit the wall and turn right or left to travel along it. If they hugged the wall tightly to the right, they’d eventually fall into the bucket at the end of the wall and be unable to crawl out. She took the second bucket, at the end of the flashing, and dug a second hole, then pressed the bucket into it deeply making sure the flashing hung over the edge of the bucket slightly so the animals couldn’t’ circle the end of the flashing avoiding the bucket pit trap. Standing back, she surveyed her work, and smiled.

Now it was a waiting game.

She took the net out of the backpack – it wasn’t large – and started wandering around the edge of the wetlands, looking for frogs. She saw several, but they were out in the water and hopped away quickly, jumping from logs or leaves before she could even get close. Kelski grumbled, wasting several precious minutes before she returned to her trap, stripped, stowed her gear, and took off with her backpack for home.

She’d check on the trap in a day or two, flying by to make sure it wasn’t loaded. If she couldn’t catch a frog that way, she’d employ more drastic measures.

Once at the tower, she greeted The Gem and headed to her workshop. She had much work to do, first grading and judging the peridot to see what shape she’d cut it into, and then evaluating what she took off of it to see if she could make more solitaires. Because the man wanted the scrap spared and cut too, Kelski couldn’t just grind away the imperfections. Instead, she had to close cut the gem down to size using a jewelry bandsaw and diamond paste with water. She still had an ugly hunk of bright green stone when she was done, but she had a lot of spared scrap she could then put to work too.

Kelski evaluated the leftover main bit, decided a pear-shaped cut would be best, and got started on the main gemstone. The cut would have to have a modified pavilion, one that was more flat than point, to rest on the statues back securely. Pear shapes were often called drops by other jewelers, which were honestly nothing more than modified round brilliant cut used for diamonds. Peridots would work well in the structure. Their inner light was not as brilliant as a diamond, as their hardness was less… more of a 6ish range, but the refraction was way up there and it would look brilliant against the yellow gold. The shape was technically called a pendeloque and when it was stretched out like Kelski was going to do, it became a briolette. She’d facet it with bands of triangular facets, emphasizing the light play inside it and eliminating a girdle so that it would lie against the frog more firmly.

[Kelski]

.

Even the table would completely scaled down. It had ninety-six table faucets on the crown after she got the table level and the bottom had significantly less, with only twenty. She noted on her sketch, which she’d been carefully drawing the peridot’s final shape on, the pattern, the cutting routine, and how it would look at the end. The truth was – the size of the peridot’s final shape would dictate how big the frog was and eventually the price. Kelski wanted to keep the stone as large as possible without making it garish so the woman could enjoy it.

She also noted, despite its size, the stone could be securely affixed to the statue ring she would carve by a four-prong finding. That made things simple for her. She could make them larger, to hold the rings’ stone securely in place, and they wouldn’t look like someone was trying to hard on the design. The best part about the design is that it didn’t require huge elevation and complex angle changes, yet it would still sparkle nicely. She would split the mains in the pavilion into three elongated sets of facets, and not be cutting corners since the entire pavilion would be hidden against the frog’s back.

Satisfied, Kelski got busy cutting. Like always, she cut the table of the crown in first, creating a level starting point after attaching the stone to her dop with hot wax. Then, once the table was ground fine and cut 1 was done, she started the other 96 standard brilliant cuts, some elongated out towards a point. Then, once those cuts were done, she put the crown sub-cuts in, creating the facets off the top. She used her armature off her vice to make sure she stayed true to the table c1 cut.

By the time the top was done, she switched the grinding wheel to the rough polishing wheel and basically repeated the entire process through three different grits of polishing wheel until she was down to the buffer. Then, once that was done, she switched back to the light grinding wheel, transferred the stone on the dop stick to its bottom uncut side, burying the polished crown in hot wax, and began cutting the pavilion with shallow fast cuts. The pavilion was a lot faster work and she finished without incident. She ran back through the process with the polishing wheels, and when she was done she held the finished gemstone in her hand.

It was lovely. Kelski liked green, but didn’t often get to cut a bright happy stone like this one. She’d heard frogs croaking and decided the stone fit the animal, even if it wasn’t a creature she particularly enjoyed.

Setting the stone aside, Kelski began the tedious process of cutting the scraps. She just did simple standard round brilliant designs on them, cutting the pavilions into short truncated versions since she was going to bury the gems in the ‘skin’ of the frog like they were warts.

Kelski had to pull from her stock by the time she was done, mixing in low grade sapphires that were green, low-grade emerald for the darker colors, and even some unusual green diamonds to bring the cost back up in gemstones. Seeing her hoard of finished stones, the Kelvic grinned. She’d have all the time in the world to work on the statue now. But it was dark, she was starving, and she was looking longingly towards the opening that housed her makeshift bedroom.

Food first, perhaps some time with Dess, then sleep. The Kelvic yawned. She’d continue the project after checking the traps in the morning.

Continued in: [Painted Sky Jewelry] The Peridot Frog II

Word Count: 2733

[Kelski]

G R A D E S

Kelski-

Business +2, Scouting +2, Negotiation +1, Hunting +2, Construction +2, Body Building +1

Hunting: Catching Frogs, Construction: Building Pit Traps for Amphibians, Body Building: Weilding a Shovel Digging Pits