Look at My Second Batch of Tumbled Rocks!! (+19 insets and 10 notes!)

(+19 insets and 10 notes!)

THANK YOU!!! (Note about your visits):
I can't tell you how happy I am that you guys are all really enjoying my "museum presentations"! It took me a long time to put these interactive collages together but I hoped at least a few people would like the show. Instead of just a few, so many of you have spent the extra time to look at each of my presentations...I'm delighted and very thankful that you gave me your time to look. I'm over the moon...*BIG HUGS TO ALL OF YOU*!!!! :)

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At long last, I'm finally able to share a proper presentation of my second group of tumbled rocks!

You may or may not know that a few months ago I bought a rock tumbler with the initial thought to use it for cleaning coins I find with my metal detector. As it turns out, I haven't found all that many coins because just after I got the tumbler the weather got cold and wet and I didn't go out with my metal detector. However, I couldn't stop thinking about using the rock tumbler AS a rock tumbler…go figure. :D I walk up and down our graveled driveway every morning for exercise and it's littered with countless pretty rocks. Who can resist picking them up? Not I! Soon I had enough rocks to fill a barrel (in a couple of laps of walking up and down the driveway, actually…heh) and thus began my rock tumbling initiation!

Week after week, I advanced my rocks through all four step until the day I had a pile of gleaming beauties piled before me. This first batch came out very nice and Steve and I were totally delighted at how pretty the shiny rocks were. I was hooked!

Since it takes 30-40 days per complete tumbling cycle, one must learn the skill of PATIENCE. I've never been much good with that but there's no way around the slow process of recreating a millennia of natural rock tumbling. You just have to sort of forget about them and time passes.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, the second batch completed its 4-step cycle…holy cow, what a bunch of BEAUTIES!!! We were totally dazzled by this set--they turned out even nicer than the first batch because I did a better job. I was more careful about checking the quality of a rock and not allowing rough ones to go to the next step if they weren't ready.

Fun with Rock Photography!
I decided that I needed a better way to share pictures than what I'd been doing. I was terribly bored with my usual solution of "main subject with spill of subjects in bokeh behind…*stifles a yawn*…" Those pictures are fine but I do the very same thing whenever I have a subject like that and I wanted to do something better for this group.

The solution of creating a 9-picture collage of 3x3 means that visitors will get a nice look without doing anything. But for anyone who wants more, that's where the fun is…these pictures are INSET-CENTRAL! Every collage image has its own rollover with a larger version to look at. To make it even better, I took additional pictures whenever a rock looked nice on another side. So many rocks have two views! Additionally, I've made comments about each rock.

There are FOUR total collage presentations to visit if visitors are interested. I narrowed down my favorites of my second batch to four groups of nine rocks. You will see the three clickable insets under the first rock's rollovers. Each will take you to its own presentation complete with rollovers and notes. Even though most people won't be that interested, I do know there are a bunch of you who really love rocks and may enjoy these extra presentations! Mostly though, I wanted to do this because these rocks are so very cool and deserve the attention! :)

I would like to say thank you to my husband for building me a little light studio for my rock pictures. Steve's a retired professional product photographer and his specialty was taking pictures of zillions of gems and beads at a place called Fire Mountain Gems & Beads (if you make jewelry you'll know all about this huge company! :D). He set up the tripod, lights, reflectors, mirrors and all that jazz, including the speckly grey cardstock the rocks are sitting on! :) This way I can easily take consistent pictures of my beautiful little stones…hip-hip-hooray! (Granted, I haven't bothered with perfecting the lighting on every stone…lol…I just don't care! You may also notice that a couple of rocks didn't have focus set on the right spot so there's a bit of softness…again…I don't care! Most people don't have the sophisticated eye to see when an angle could have been better and yeah, I'm one of them! It does make me different than Steve…he has to make his lighting and angles pitch-perfect…I just want to take the picture! LOL! Thanks to Steve, I have a studio that is nearly bomb-proof so I can get quality pictures very fast and easy!!

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Pam, I got your letter/ipernity article about your latest appointments about your medical situation. I am sad that things aren't more encouraging. I wish there was something I could do to fix everything but at least I can send you my positive energy, my virtual hugs and my warmest understanding and support. I wish this all wasn't so totally sucky… :( You are in my thoughts, dear Pammy…

Explored on 3/6/20; highest placement #18.