CLOUDY DAZE

Cloudy Daze is the Novice Design that was selected for the United States Faceting Guild 2025 gemstone faceting competition.

- BY MARK OROS

Each year, the United States Faceting Guild (USFG) holds a gemstone faceting competition with a series of designs that cover the spectrum of levels of faceters, from novice to grand master. Cloudy Daze is the simplest of the designs yet it produces a finished gemstone that rivals more complex designs.

CLOUDY DAZE

The best way to describe Cloudy Daze is to say it is simply elegant. The gemstone designer, Jeffery Hill, created a simple design with amazing performance for light return and scintillation.

This is an excellent design for a range of gemstone materials from quartz to sapphire. It can be used for earrings yet it can also be used for a ring. I will be making one of my daughters a set of earrings from the design in fluorescent lab-grown bright yellow garnet, YAG, yttrium aluminum garnet.

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