I have neglected my blog a little bit but there is a very good reason for that -- we have started a new business -- me and my husband have helped one of our friends with her felting shop for a while and now it is fully ours!
Some of the beautiful things that you can find in it, also very much related to amber :)
Don't worry, I'm not dropping my amber jewelry shop -- in fact, pretty soon there are going to be some very cute new things coming up.

So, as I said felt and related to amber:

WoolenClogs

I have mentioned previously in my blog, that my grandfather was a national artist working with Baltic amber.
I used to spend long evenings inhaling the smell of amber dust and watch him work on amazing pieces of jewelry or home decor.
Some of those pieces I managed to save from being sold or handed away and can share with you here.
Unfortunately he did not manage to finish one thing he was talking about for a long time -- an amber chess set. He kept looking for the best white (or bone as it is sometimes called) amber, but large pieces are rare and expensive and so this dream remained only that -- a dream.
He made a lot of different things during his craftsman career --

This week has been a bit of a run :) but as I have settled down for the weekend I received great news -- one of my Baltic amber teething necklaces has received a review! Thank you Monica!

http://www.mommyandlove.com/product-review-drop-of-amber-teething-necklace/

DropOfAmber Baltic amber teething necklace

All the pictures are taken by me unless mentioned otherwise. If you fancy a piece of jewellery -- leave a comment or convo me on etsy.

So by now we know what amber is, how to recognize it, what kind of amber modification exist etc.
Let's see what else is there of natural origin that quite often "pretends" to be amber.

I will talk about two things today -- Copal and Kauri gum.
They are both tree resins, that have solidified or partly solidified with age.

The term copal describes resinous substances in an intermediate stage of polymerization and hardening between "gummier" resins and amber. The word copal is derived from the Nahuatl language word copalli, meaning "incense"(from Wikipedia).

I missed to post last week -- was preparing for Easter and visiting my brother in Greece. Also, I was finishing this beauty:

Sterling silver cat pendant

Amber teething necklaces by Drop of Amber

Moms and babies love amber teething necklaces. However there is a lot of questions about the healing properties of amber. Which amber has the most healing power, whether that depends on the colour and so on.
Let me clear some of that up for you.

1st statement: Any amber works the same. FALSE
The main reason amber is considered to be a natural analgesic is the content of the succinic acid in it. The only amber that has succinic acid in its chemical constitution is Baltic amber, thus, if you want a working teething necklace it needs to be from Baltic amber.

White amber Picture taken from http://www.ambergallery.lt

I hope most of my readers realise that amber is not really "made" as such. It has been around for hundreds of millions of years and is a product of a long process.
Amber is fossilized tree resin (not sap). Hundreds of millions of years ago huge coniferous forests covered big parts of what is today Baltic sea and its environs. Resin from these trees (in our region its Pinus succinifera and similar trees) seeped down sometimes trapping insects or other organic matter (this way forming so called inclusions) and then solidified. Geological changes caused parts of the forest to be buried under the ground or later even water and the process began.

Small raw amber nuggets

Ok, I'm cheating a bit :) it was new 2 months ago.
A great designer Lisssa has been super fast and made me anew logo in a week! And not just any week -- Christmas and New Year week. She is brilliant!
I have seen a new logo on my friends shop and asked her for some pointers. She gave me Lisssa's contact and off we went.
After several emails where I described what I want and some tweaking of her ideas she came up with this:

My shop logo

For a long long time the only kind of fossilized resin that was allowed to be called amber was Baltic amber.
Then along came the second world war and Germans lost their access to the Baltic amber mines. Enterprising companies started looking for amber elswhere and found it, lots of it in fact in Dominican Republic. The original company became so successful that it soon got kicked out of Dominica and forbidden to export raw amber.

Blue/green amber (Wikimedia commons)

This fossilized resin was accepted into amber family around 1960.
Dominican amber comes from the resin of Hymenea protera trees as opposed to Pinus succinifera of Baltic amber. It is guessed that a lot of the resin was produced during forest fires caused by lightnings.

Dominican amber is found in many colors - the traditional yellow, orange and brown, but also transparent, without color.
Pink variety is rear, but the reason for this blog post is the rarest blue or sometimes green amber. Only some 100 - 150 kg of blue amber are mined in a year. Miners tell that blue amber is most commonly found in the amber mines in the mountain ranges around Santiago, Dominican Republic, Palo Quemado mine.

Amber is a naturally occurring fossilization of Pinus succinifera resin. The age of Baltic amber is estimated at 40-60 millions years.
It is used for jewelry and medical/beauty purposes.
The majority of the world's amber is found in the Baltic Sea region (hence the

Inclusion in Baltic Amber (picture from Wikimedia)

name -- Baltic amber). Other kinds of amber, added to the classification quite recently, only from 1950s when amber was found in Dominican Republic, make up only 2% of the total yearly production of amber.
Geologists estimate, that there is enough amber in currently known deposits to last us another 1000 years, but some of these deposits are in unattractive for mining locations -- protected zones etc, so the demand of amber drives people to "play" with what is available.
Because Baltic amber is naturally occurring fossilisation, quite often there are impurities, different colours, etc in one piece and people quite often want uniformity. Certain methods where developed already in 19th century to provide that.

As most people know, amber is a fossilized resin from coniferous trees. It has many amazing magical and healing properties.
Copal is "immature" amber. It's softer and easier to damage, but has most of the same qualities as amber, just to a lesser degree.
 
How to test your jewelry to see whether it is really made of amber:

Light test

True Amber will fluoresce blue under a black light. This is probably the easiest way to tell, with no chance of harm to a piece.

Static test

Another simple and safe test. But probably a lot harder to do if it's a piece set in metal. Amber is warm to the touch and when rubbed, it will become electro-statically charged and will attract lint/dust particles. And to a lesser degree, Copal will do the same.

Lithuania is an Amber country, we call amber Lithuanian gold, wear it on all occasions, consider it our national stone. There are historical facts about Amber trade road starting in this region.
So I wanted to start from the very beginning -- the legends, folklore.

The most known one is a legend about Jūratė and Kastytis:

A sculpture of Jūratė and Kastytis in Palanga, Lithuania

Since I was little I remember amber being around me all the time -- in my mothers jewellery, in decorations on the wall, in the sand on the seashore but most of all in my grandfathers workshop.
The smell of amber dust mixed with freshly cut wood, heated metal and all this surrounded by all sorts of interesting (for an inquisitive little girl) equipment that my grandpa used to work miracles (as it looked to my excited younger self) from this warm honey coloured media.
Why do I suddenly remember all this? Recently, when going through my boxed belongings I found a sack full of small raw amber nuggets and the memories of all that time spent in my grandfathers workshop all those years ago came back.
A thought hit me -- what if I try to work that same magic? Of course, I will start slow and simple, but I have a vision and I think I will make that come true.
And now my first small experiments with amber and brass.
All natural, all handmade and unique: