Sweetheart Earrings

A Gorgeous Grab awaits you..........

Have you ever wondered how people make wonderful and compelling handmade jewellery? Jewellery making is an art and you might think not everybody is blessed with it.......but is that really true? Give me a chance and let me show you how quickly you can excel the art and without much investment too...Ya!! Here is the video that shows how to make adorable earrings out of a string or silver links, quartz beads and all you need is some pliers and ear wires.....Watch it to learn it..

Tale of Diamonds

When you go back to the history, you could see some interesting incidents experienced by the travellers in their discoveries. The travelers loved to share the experiences they felt in their journeys. One such tale from 'Travels of Marco Polo' about diamonds is below.

Diamonds have always been looked on as a symbol of power and wealth and they're cherished and valued. They're abundant and ubiquitous in the dense forests, mountains, deep valleys and in the beds of torrents. But diamonds were not so easy to get because of the hindrances. When the rain stopped and the streams stopped flowing from the mountian, attempts were taken by men to get hold of the diamonds. But the obstacle was in getting there as the valleys were infested with venomous snakes.

So enticers like flesh soaked in blood were used to lure the snakes. The diamonds get embedded in the flesh pieces which was eaten by the snakes. Eagles used the oppurtunity of snakes' inability to move faster after the food, pounced on them and have them as their prey.Diamonds were then collected from the feces or droppings of the eagles.Sometimes they were found in the carcass of snakes.

The earliest record of diamond history belongs to 3000 years ago in India, where these stones were first discovered for their property to refract light. Interestingly, the region he talks about in this tale is India.

Garnet

Garnet is a group of minerals that have been used since the Bronze Age as gemstones and abrasives. Today, it is widely known as the birthstone for January. It's often seen in red, but are available in a wide variety of colors spanning the entire spectrum. The name "garnet" may have been inherited from the Latingranatus ("grain"), possibly a reference to "pomegranate", a plant with red seeds similar in shape, size, and color to some garnet crystals.

Six common varieties of garnet are recognized based on their chemical composition. They are pyrope, almandine, spessartite, grossular, uvarovite and andradite.

Appearance

Garnets are found in many colors including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, and colorless. The rarest of these is the blue garnet, was discovered in the late 1990s in Bekily, Madagascar. It is also found in some parts of the United States and Russia. They usually show up with their colors ranging from shades of green, beige, brown, gray, and blue in day light and appear reddish or purplish/pink color in incandescent light. Because of their color changing quality, this kind of garnet is often mistaken for Alexandrite.

Crystal Structure

Garnets are nesosilicates having the general formula X 3Y 2(SiO 4) 3. Garnets are often found in the dodecahedralcrystal habit, but are also commonly found in the trapezohedron habit. They crystallize in the isometric system, having three axes that are all of equal length and perpendicular to each other. Garnets do not show cleavage, so when it is put under stress, sharp irregular pieces are formed.

Fresh Water Pearls

The gentle shine and softness that it exudes have made pearls possess an endearing quality. The purest form of pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty. The quality natural pearls are rare and that's why it is seen as something precious, admirable and valuable.

Pearls are formed inside the shell of shelled mollusks. It is produced within the soft tissue or the mantle of the mollusk. Natural freshwater pearls form in various species of freshwater mussels, which live in lakes, rivers and ponds while salt water pearls grow within pearl oysters, which live in the oceans and seas.

Pearls are either natural or cultured. A natural pearl, as the name indicates, is one that forms without any human intervention at all while cultured pearls are pearls that are formed by artificial means.

Natural pearls are rare and difficult to find and are therefore highly valued. Earlier natural pearls were found in many parts of the world and now it's availability has been shrinked to certain areas mostly in the seas of Bahrain and in the Australian and Indian Ocean. It is no wonder why it is called as the Queen of the Sea.

Some of the famous pearls are known to have possessed by great people.

La Peregrina, was once the most celebrated pearl of its time weighing 203.8 grains, it was celebrated not only for its great size, but also its perfect pear shape and its perfect white color. It was owned by Queen Mary of Spain.

The Imperial Hong Kong Pearl is one of the largest pearls ever found measuring 26mm by 39mm and weighs in at 25.5 grams. It is believed to have once belonged to Chinese royalty.

Perhaps the most famous is the Abernethy pearl. This one weights 44 grams and was collected by Bill Abernethy and named after him.

One of the largest natural pearls in the world is The Pearl of Asia. It was discovered in the 17th century in India, was 600 carats. It became the property of the King of Persia (currently Iran), who in turn gave it to the Chinese Emperor Qianlong and the Chinese considered it as a holy thing that will bring happiness and good fortune.

Precious metals

A precious metal is a rare metallic chemical element of high economic value. Chemically, the precious metals are less reactive than most elements and have high luster, are softer or more ductile, and have higher melting points than other metals.The best-known precious metals are gold and silver having its uses in art, jewellery and coinage apart from the industrial use. Other precious metals include the platinum group metals: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum, of which platinum is the most widely traded.   

The demand for precious metals is driven not only by their practical use, but also by their role as investments and store of value. Rhodium is usually the most expensive of the precious metals, over 4.5 times more expensive than platinum and on the other hand silver is substantially the less expensive one of all other precious metals,but is often traditionally considered a precious metal for its role in coinage and jewellery.

Emerald Jewelery

A lot of factors should be taken into consideration while buying an emerald jewelery.

Firstly, ensure you buy emerald from a trustworthy dealer or jeweler. Preferably one who specializes in precious gemstones and emeralds in particular, if possible.

Check the color of the stone. Generally speaking the deeper the color or hue the more valuable the stone will be.

Many gemstones are heat treated, including emeralds. This is done to bring out the colors more and sometimes to even change the color of a stone.

Make sure you can examine the stone from all sides and angles. Turn it over in your hand. Try to examine the stone in natural light.

Finally, pure genuine emeralds are not cheap.

Fossil Coral

Fossil coral was once the skeleton of a coral polyps whose organic structure has been transformed to stone. After the coral died, the skeleton became saturated with water that contained dissolved silica, the same mineral that is the principal component of quartz, chalcedony, agate, and jasper. In this case, the silica replaced the coral’s soft tissues and filled its cavities. Because the skeleton was encased in silica, oxygen couldn’t get to it, and it didn’t completely deteriorate. You can still see the traces of its structure in the fossilized gem. The different colors that you see in fossil coral come from the different minerals that existed in the silica solutions, which usually harden into a chalcedony or agate.  (For a list of physical characteristics, please see Agate.)

Fossil coral is also known as agatized coral, Indonesian coral, and Indonesian jasper.  

Fossil corals are found throughout the world in sedimentary rocks. Many of these corals originally lived between 215 and 340 million years ago. In the United States, fossil coral has been found in Kansas, Pennyslvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia where it has been named the State Gemstone. It’s also found in Indonesia.

Fossil coral comes in a range of gentle colors:tans, greys, pinks, yellows, browns, and occasionally red. There’s also a fair amount of variety in the pattern which can range from a banded effect that almost looks as if it’s been painted on with watercolors to the distinctive flower and starburst patterns.

There isn’t much lore—either historical or metaphysical—about fossil coral. Some healers use it to draw toxins from the body and psyche. Since it’s primarily a chalcedony—or microcrystalline quartz—it shares the  metaphysical qualities assigned to agate and jasper, as well as some qualities ascribed to fossils: It will help counter old mental and emotional patterns, allowing the wearer to open to innovation and fresh ideas.  Fossil coral is also said to be a stone of both balance and stability that helps one integrate memories of the past and past lives into the present.

Fossil coral beads, being chalcedony, are fairly tough, with a hardness of 7, so  you can safely bead them into any sort of jewelry.  Our fossil coral beads come in beautiful shades of browns and pinks and greys, and will look lovely when combined with smoky quartz and ametrine. For contrast, try beading them with the green or grey or even red jaspers.