Refining Displayed products - Can I do it?

[Cold Turkey]

Hey, First time posting. Love Zen Cart but I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

I apologize if this has already been answered but a full day of searching posts has only confused me further.
I'm having problems sorting my stock into categories and subcategories. I have a lot of unique items and a lot of bulk items but I'm finding I am branching too far with my subcategories, trying to keep everything catalogued.
What I really want to do is separate my stock into the simple categories:

Opal Jewellery-
Pearl Jewellery-
Loose Opals-
Loose Strands-
Beading Supplies-
Titanium & Tungsten-
Other-

With no subcategories

And then give people the ability to refine the displayed items by certain selections.
i.e..
Product Type: Ring , Pendant , Earrings , Strands
Material Type: Gold - Yellow / White, Silver , Diamonds - With / Without
Product Origin: (for pearls) Freshwater / Saltwater , (for opal) QLD / NSW / SA

So... All Pearl Jewellery stock is displayed when "Pearl Jewellery" catalogue is clicked.
Then customer my define that they are after White Gold only - Eliminating Yellow Gold and Silver
Then they may decide they want a Saltwater Pearl only - So on and so forth.

Thank you to anyone and everyone who helps me with this even in the slightest way.

I'm also after general feedback on the rest of my site www.gemgallery.com.au
Zen Cart is in maintenance mode because I am still worried about security (probably my next post)


Where's the POST ICON for BRAIN ERROR??

[Cold Turkey]

Thanks to anyone who helps. I'd like to add certain data to my products when they are created (Setting, Diamonds, Location etc.) I don't want to display the data and definitely don't want customers to be able to change it. All I want to use the values for is to refine the displayed results if the customer requires.

eg. products into basic categories.

Opal Jewellery
Pearl Jewellery
etc.

And have all of my products display when it's category is chosen. Then I'd like to have an appropriate "Filter Results" box using dropdowns in the column, with set options like:

Setting - Yellow Gold, White Gold, Silver.
Diamonds - Yes, No
Stone Location - Qld,NSW,SA
etc.

They don't need to self populate (but I'd love it if they did)

Has anyone run into similar problems? I've looked into adding fields to a product, creating attributes and I've been looking for mods and threads to help me out for over a week now and still haven't had any luck putting the whole project together. This is also the second time I've posted in the hopes of even getting a nudge in the right direction.

I know I'm a newbie and that I'm asking a lot but I really would appreciate ANY info.

Cheers