Things Members are working on

I got a rock tumbler for my birthday so I wanted something kind of soft to work with first so they would polish up easily. I had read that fluorite was a good choice, so I bought a little bag of rough nicely-colored pieces. I'm attaching pictures of 2 examples and the rest are in the tumbler now. When it's done I'll add some "after" images! While I'm waiting on that, my other fun project is going to be a second try at a simple soapstone carving but I forgot to take a picture. I'll try to remember to take a picture of the before or at least the during!

So, I let my fluorite project get mostly destroyed. :-/ I was doing okay with my first time in the tumbler until I got to the polishing step. They looked really "scratchy" to me so I ran them at the fine polish step for a whole week. When I opened the tumbler, they were pretty much aquarium gravel - too small to do much with!

I did some reading and I think I got a little grit crossed into the final steps which scratched the finish. I also think my tumbler had too little material it in. I bought some ceramic media to use for my next project since I often don't have enough in a batch to fill it. I'm also being super careful with my next try, keeping the grit separate, and now I'm tumbling some blue quartz.

I forgot to take a picture of the "before" on the quartz, but I will attach a pic of one of my wire wraps. I'm semi-new to that too, so my early ones weren't as tight, but this bit of what is supposedly blue agate (see attached pic) that I bought came out a bit better!