Diamonds may or may not be a girl’s best friend – but they definitely can be beautiful, and they are the birthstone for April. One trend I love is the use of rough diamonds in jewelry. While a beautifully cut, sparkly diamond can be breathtaking, I love the earthy, natural look of diamonds left just [...]

The birthstone for March is the lovely pale blue aquamarine. It is the pale blue or green version of beryl, and the color ranges from almost clear to mossy light green to sky blue. As with most gemstones, it comes in a range of prices and quality, and can be used in beaded jewelry or [...]

I’ve been wanting to play with some new copper head pins I made that have beautiful deep pink ball ends, and when I received my latest goodies from artbeads to review, I knew the red poppy jasper beads would be perfect. (You can find the jasper beads and other shades of red and pink in [...]

Did you know that amethyst and citrine are both quartz? Amethyst is the purple variety of quartz, and citrine is yellow. Most people familiar with semiprecious jewelry know that – but did you know that citrine is made by heating amethyst to high temperatures? There is even a gemstone called ametrine, which has purple and [...]

I found this great torso jewelry display at a local salvage store. “She” is modeling a braided/woven necklace I made a while ago with citrine, carnelian, peridot, and labradorite beads on fine silver wire.

It’s been a while since I last wrote about caring for jewelry – and since I use a lot of silver and pearls in my work, it seems appropriate to mention how to care for these materials. The key to preventing tarnish on silver is keeping it clean, and storing it sealed off from air, [...]

If you want to learn more about gemstones, check out the Gemwise Blog, written by Richard Wise, author of “Secrets of the Gem Trade: The Connoisseur’s Guide to Precious Gemstones“. I believe that people who love jewelry – whether buyers or makers – can never know too much about the materials that go into jewelry, [...]

Stones (and pearls) are often dyed to enhance or change their natural color to one that is deemed more desirable. Some dyes stones will retain the color permanently, but some won’t. If you suspect that your pearls or stones are dyed, and you want to check to see how permanent the dye is, soaking them [...]

Some recent posts on the Orchid jewelry forum (hosted by Ganoksin.com) reminded me of this issue. Cubic zirconia is not zircon. Zircon is not cubic zirconia. They are completely different materials that have similar sounding names. Chemically, zircon is ZrSiO4 and Cubic Zirconia is ZrO2. In addition, cubic zirconia is almost always manmade, while zircon [...]

Turquoise is generally a bluish/greenish color, with some matrix that is brown or black. So what are these stones for sale called yellow turquoise and purple turquoise? While I can’t answer that question definitely, I can shed a little light on the subject. Turquoise doesn’t come in purple, at least not from nature. Purple turquoise [...]