The awards honor, recognize and promote designers whose work uses natural colored gemstones and cultured pearls in finished fine jewelry design.

FORBES: Award Winning Jewelry Designs

Launched in 1984, the annual natural colored gemstone and cultured pearl jewelry design competition is considered by many to be the most respected and prestigious creative award for the jewelry design industry.

FORBES: Award Winning Jewelry Designs

The competition is founded and hosted by the A merican Gem Trade Association, an organization of United States and Canadian trade professionals that promote the long-term stability and integrity of the natural colored gemstone and cultured pearl industries.

FORBES: Award Winning Jewelry Designs

He showed how paints containing powdered metal can be splashed with acid to create metal oxides that give the effect of natural rusting, and how to make fake tree bark from a mold ingeniously colored using carpet scrapings.

CNN: , for

In the spring, tourists come from all over the world to see the natural wonders: crystalline salt popping out of the ground, sand dunes surrounded by mountains, vibrantly colored, unearthly-looking rock formations and, if there's been enough rain, blooming wildflowers.

NPR: Students Blossom in the Desert