About Blue Heron Gems
Hello! We are John & Patty Schmidt & would like to take this opportunity to share a little of our lives with you. Blue Heron Gems had its humble beginnings on the North Shore of mighty Lake Superior on a cold week in November. A popular activity on the North Shore is searching for Lake Superior Agates on the beaches. We began our own search & soon discovered that we couldn't stop! Rock hunting is truly addictive! Three or four days later & heavily burdened with our finds, we visited the rock shop in Beaver Bay, MN to find out what to do with all of our rocks. Incidentally, if you haven't been to the Beaver Bay Agate Shop, it's worth the trip for great lapidary rough & a world class Laker museum. Starter saws & arbors were available & we began our long journey into lapidary & jewelry. As the years went by, we continually added to our lapidary equipment & of course, our rock collection. We now refer to our home as "The Mine" which consists of 10 parts rock to one part living essentials. We mean really, who needs furniture anyway??
Our latest adventure has brought us to the beautiful northwoods town of Iron Mountain, Michigan. We purchased a cute little house with a large basement which is where we cut all of our stones. It has been nice leaving the big city behind. The small town atmosphere works just fine for us & the close proximity to lots of wild & wonderful backwoods country makes our heads spin with the possibilities. We are adding a few pictures to give you an idea of what we are talking about.
Our interests lie in the unconventional & unusual & we try to offer the same in our gemstones & jewelry. All of our offerings are made one at a time in our shop & are truly one-of-a-kind items. No mass production here!
As a self taught lapidary & silversmith, John feels he finds it easy to be unconventional since he doesn't know what conventional is. By not following the herd, we have the ability to think outside the box resulting in more unique products for our dear customers. John does almost all of the lapidary & silver work while Patty does the real heavy lifting with the computer work & photographs & now does a fair amount of cutting as well.
We have lived & traveled extensively in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest & the Midwest & we feel those experiences have benefited us as we incorporate those memories into our work. We have camped, hiked, canoed, kayaked, bicycled, skied, crawled, slithered, slid & hit bottom in all of those places & have always felt the deepest regard for all things in the natural world.
We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all of our eBay friends who have been a constant source of information & joy to us!
We are quality minded people who strive to offer the same in our work. While Blue Heron Gems is run as a commercial enterprise, we must admit our biggest thrill is sharing our appreciation & wonder of rocks & minerals with others who have similar interests.
Please check out our Links page which includes links to some of our most respected suppliers, contacts & friends, in particular The Gem Shop, Gary at the Cabin House Trading Post & Shain at Gemkoi all of which have gone the extra mile to supply us with the very best lapidary rough available. They are respected dealers & will deliver the highest quality & customer service always.
A HUGE thanks to Shain at Gemkoi who assisted us with the creation of our website & continues to be a huge help to Patty as she learns the world of website development. If you need help with your website, give Shain a holler, he is the best. (Gemkoi)
Meet
Gizmo, our faithful cat! He is a true joy & just a little silly :-)
 
I am SO cute!
Nap Time
Watching TV
Michigan
  
Sunrise at Keewaydin Lake Pier's Gorge
Craig Lake
The Shop
 
John
in the shop The
Mess :-)
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