How I gave up my job and decided to sell minerals :) About my shop :)

Hello everyone!
First of all, let me apologize for the long break. It was a busy period for me; a few things happened and I felt the need to rethink my life. You probably remember my post from October last year about the new job that I got, I was all excited and very happy. It was a managerial position in a big supermarket, I thought a dream position I had always wanted to have. After a few months, however, I decided to see things that I didn`t like and didn`t agree with and so decided I to leave.
The period that followed was filled with relaxing moments with my child, something that I had missed so much and no longer had time for, meetings with friends and learning about minerals. Since then I have been collecting many, many times- something that I must write about here, too. During that time I met a few people who let me understand that I should follow my dreams. And as my dream has always been to have my own business, I decided to go for it. At first I though of a stationary shop (not with minerals) and was making plans, but meanwhile I sold a few of my minerals online with ease, and thought that THIS IS THE WAY FOR ME TO FOLLOW! I should turn my passion into a profession. And here it is, my Etsy shop- RockyRoadMinerals.
This shop is a newborn baby that needs to be fed to grow, so I started promoting it on FB, Pinterest and Instagram. I constantly add new things and think of the ways in which I could make it better. I sell minerals (including self-collected), rough rocks, pebbles, real stone jewelry, cabochons and whatever comes from the Irish shore. Here are a few examples:

Pebbles with holes, Irish beach

Flint stones, Irish beach

Driftwood, crafts supplies, Irish beach

Aquamarine with smoky quartz, The Mourne Mts, Northern Ireland, self-collected

Double terminated quartz cluster, Paskistan

Quartz cluster, Pakistan

Orthoclase, Albite, Mica, Smoky Quartz, The Mourne Mts, Northern Ireland, self-collected

Black pebbles with white stripes, Irish beach

Pebble with a fossil, Irish beach

Water tumbled shell parts, Irish beach

Sea glass, Irish beach

Quartz crystal cluster, Owenahincha, Ireland, self-collected

Mica, the Mourne Mts, Northern Ireland, self-collected

Chalcedony, Doubravice, Czech Republic, self-collected

Hematite, Owenahincha, Ireland, self-collected

Irish beach set

Large turquoise cabochon, Nevada

Hag stone, Irish beach

Large quartz geode, Morocco

Amethyst cluster, Uruguay

Variscite cabochon, large, USA

Small turquoise cabochon, Nevada

Syrongopora Coral fossil, County Cork, Ireland, self-collected

Big quartz crystal cluster with double termination and black rutile

 Of course there is soooooooo much more in my shop and new things are added every day.
Please visit RockyRoadMinerals on Etsy.com and tell me what you think!
Oh, and visit my blog soon again, there are more posts coming very, very soon! :)

HUGE hematite from Owenahincha

One day MY BOYFRIEND ASKED ME IF I WOULD LIKE TO GO COLLECTING THE NEXT DAY (8-) )!!!!, so what else could I answer but "YES, OF COURSE!!!" It really doesn`t happen too often to hear something like this from him. Well, in fact, it doesn`t happen at all, this one time was an exception :)
The next day, together with my sis, we headed to the shore. No plan really, it was a spontaneous trip, we were kind of hoping to find some interesting spots on the way and stop at every one for a while. Unfortunately, this did not happen. We were driving around, along the shore, disappointed. I could see that Martin was getting discouraged; he was hungry, tired from the constant driving, annoyed as there were no good sites and the sky was getting gray. I suggested  that we could go to our old spot, Owenahincha, and see if we could find something there. It started to rain a little, and the tide was quite high, so the higher rocks located further down were inaccessible, we could only explore a small part of the beach. Luckily, we found some hematite after a few minutes and were lucky enough as Klaudia came across some REALLY HUGE BOULDER of white quartz, covered with hematite. She saw it 2-3metres above her head, stuck in clay and held by it. She climbed on the nearest rock and somehow managed to loosen it up, so it fell on the sand below. It was so big we couldn`t just take it like this, so we broke it into several smaller pieces, and as we did, it revealed more and more hematite. What a great finding!!!

The boulder already broken, Klaudia delighted with her finding!!!

Still dirty rock, hammer for scale

Many lovely pieces

This one was presented to a friend

One of the smallest

This rich piece has been sold, it`s going to be a part of someone`s collection

How do you like it? :D

Quartz with chlorite inclusions from Dingle

A while ago we went on a family trip to the Dingle Peninsula where, of course, we just HAD TO do some collecting ;) After a while of digging in the upper layer of soil by the cliffs, Klaudia found this little, beautiful quartz crystal with lovely, green inclusions of chlorite. What a treat! And yeah... lucky Klaudia, yhymm ;)

Crystal about 2cm long, chlorite inclusions

Light from behind to show the inclusions

"Flowery" chlorite inclusions in quartz

Found here :)

Lovely views

Cotterites # 2 and 3 :D

Hello everyone.
As you already know, I feel that I have a special relation with the super-rare mineral called Cotterite. It is because it was found in the town where I live, Mallow (Ireland), and because it`s super-rare ;)
Two weeks ago we visited the National Museum in Dublin where we had a chance to see many great specimens (there will be a separate post on it), including Cotterite.
The first one we saw is on display in the Museum of Natural History. It is smaller than the one we saw at UCC, but bigger than the third one (see below).

Cotterite on display in the Museum of Natural History, Dublin

The above photo was taken through glass and therefore is not really good.

Then, thanks to staff members of the National Museum, we were able to see the second Cotterite, which is a part of the UCD collection.

UCD collection Cotterite

UCD collection Cotterite

UCD collection Cotterite

UCD collection Cotterite

UCD collection Cotterite

I`m glad I know the name of Miss Cotter now :)

This way we have now seen three of of only four Cotterites ever found. The fourth one is in Great Britain and this is currently my goal to see it one day, to have my "collection of Cotterites" complete ;)

Owenahincha super pocket and a few unknowns

Owenahincha (it took me a while to learn the name of this place ;) ) beach is one of my favourite spots in Ireland, both for relaxing (the beach is almost always empty, and it is so beautiful) and collecting ( we always find something nice).

That day we were hoping to find some better hamatite samples, maybe some quartzes, but what we found was beyond our dreams!

First, Klaudia came across a small pocket and spent an hour taking out a single quartz cluster. This trip would be worth it even if we found this specimen ONLY.

A few undamaged tips + one crystal with flowery chlorite inclusions= a great specimen!

Chlorite inclusions in quartz

Meanwhile I found a rock with potential, I noticed a few small quartz tips sticking out of clay. I called Klaudia and we started digging carefully in the clay. We found only a few small crystals, though. However, Klaudia switched on her "crystal radar" and her "crystal nose" sniffed THAT POCKET! On top of the rock, in a place I wouldn`t even try to reach! Sometimes it helps to be tall and have long legs ;) While I was still digging a bit lower, she was taking out crystal after crystal from that big pocket! Some of them the size of a thumb, some clusters, some double terminated... All dirty, so we still didn`t know what was hidden under the clay. We were to discover it at home, after giving the specimens a few days long bath in my son`s plastic bathtub.

I first spotted this badly weathered, rotten, ugly quartz "cluster", literally falling apart in my hands. I brushed it gently and noticed some pink crystals under all this rotten, stinky stuff. I didn`t know what it was, I only knew it wasn`t quartz. It actually took over two weeks of studying the crystals before, with Thomas` help I was able to find out what it was- ALBITE!

Klaudia on the rock, the huge pocket with albite was higher

Quartz, albite and limonite, photo taken through macro lenses for a mobile phone

 After cleaning we also realized that we have something else. What I initially considered clay turned out to be most likely limonite after pyrite and limonite after siderite.

Here are a few out of over 30 crystals and clusters from this pocket:

one of my favourites!

Limonite pseudomorphs after pyrite

quartz

A beautiful, about 4cm high quartz cluster. Excellent specimen with many clear, undamaged crystals

Thank you Thomas for editing my pictures :)

Some other, unedited photos:

Specimen about 3.5cm

Same specimen

Another nice cluster, about 3cm

Albite and limonite

Broken...

...but only for a while :D

Another one, broken...

... and fixed :)

Another favourite, here still wet after a bath in a detergent with some lemon juice (great method for removing iron, by the way)

I will add photos of the limonite after siderite, so come back if you are interested to see them. And also, I am currently investigating what is the pink stuff covering my crystals.

This day we went to look for hematite, but we found none. We found other treasures. But we went back to Owenahincha shortly after this trip and this time found our hematite- LOTS.OF.HUGE.HEMATITES! Check out my next post!

Hope you enjoyed :D