Distinction Jewelry – The Blog

Swiss blue topaz earrings

I recently got a box full of goodies from Levenger to organize my custom orders, gems I need to order, sketches of prospective projects, etc.  My inner neat-freak is in heaven!  (My neat-freak has to remain an inner one…my house is a Federal disaster area.)  Their Circa system lets you add, remove, and sort pages in your notebook on a whim, solving the main problems I have with most journals and sketchbooks.

As an almost entirely online jeweler, the specs of my custom orders are already written out online, but I need something with measurements and such that I can grab and run over to the studio with.  This baby is perfect, and I can even pull gems from stock and staple them to the custom order card so that I don’t run the risk of double-selling them or using a stone I promised a customer in a different project by accident.  Very slick!

I find myself wishing they sold an automotive documents wallet for the glove box (although it would just get stolen, I suppose – my car has been broken into twice this year, once while I was on jury duty).  Most such things are so cheaply made they crack and turn yellow just from the unbearable strain of existing.

This train of thought originates from last night, when I got pulled over by an Oregon State Police trooper on the way to work.  It turns out that my car has mutant (and illegal!) factory turn signals that blink white instead of yellow or red like, as he put it, “every other car on the road.”

The  pleasant, gently professional officer (I love good cops!)  proceeded ask for my driver’s license and registration, and thus should have ensued the inevitable fishing around in the dark for misplaced official documents.   That night however, I had the good fortune to know exactly where they were thanks to the latest round of theives – sitting on my dash because I’d had to get new ones to replace those stolen!

Sigh.  Now I need to figure out how to turn white blinkers into yellow ones (while resisting the urge to set gemstones in them), and find a decent document holder.  Have I mentioned I’d rather be making jewelry?

I’m excited by odd things, being a jeweler!  A cool gemstone can actually make my heart beat faster, and it just happened when I opened up my latest gem order and pulled out several varieties of rose cut gemstones to use in my Little Beauties line of stud earrings.  You see, the rose cut is a cabochon (cut with a flat back to set in a bezel) that is faceted!

Several of my customers have wished aloud that the impeccable comfort and wearability of my Little Beauties earrings could be merged with the sparkle of the faceted gems in my Little Gems line.  Well, that dream just came true on a small scale.  I have rose cuts in 6mm black spinel, lemon quartz, and a nice dark pink garnet.  I set several pairs last night when I got home from jury duty and they turned out so fabulous!  I can’t wait to photograph them and list them for sale, you all are going to love them.

The rose cut has been around for quite a while, but is relatively rare.  It’s only recently that I’ve seen a small selection of rose cut gem offerings from one of my favorite dealers at an affordable price, so these are great for jewelry collectors and those who appreciate the unusual.

If you’ve found this article, you probably love the rich, royal color of sugilite and are wondering if that strand of beads you found on ebay for under ten dollars could possibly be the same stuff you’ve seen for sale for far, far more.  The short answer is no.  Genuine sugilite with good color is quite valuable, and there is a lucrative market in dying stones to resemble sugilite as well as in calling any stone with some purple in it sugilite.

This will serve as a beginner’s guide for weeding out the fakes, but I would suggest running your potential purchase past an expert before buying if at all possible.  It’s fake sugilite if:

• It’s cheap.  You can expect to pay $35.00 (bargain price!) to over $200.00 for a strand of decent sugilite beads.  For a cabochon of ring size, you are looking at a retail price of $25-$200.00 depending on the quality of the stone.  I would be suspicious of any piece of finished jewelry containing sugilite for under a hundred dollars unless the stone is tiny, has very poor color, or just has a few sugilite beads in it.
• It’s called flower sugilite, Russian sugilite, Chinese sugilite, or sugilite jasper.
• It’s called a sugilite “crystal” and it’s anything larger than tiny.
• It’s a flat, uniform dull purple color with thick black veins running through it.
• It’s identified as “reconsituted,” “assembled,” “manmade,” or “lab grown.”

They’re two different things, right?  Or are they?  Rubies and sapphires are actually color variations of the same mineral, corundum.   Corundum occurrs in a remarkably wide color spectrum including blues, pinks, reds, yellows, greens, blacks, whites, and every shade in between.  Traditionally, the red variety has been called ruby while all of the others were termed sapphires.

The waters get muddied when one looks at ruby colors, because rubies are commonly seen as a stone with a wide range of hues from true red to wine to pink.  The most hard-line interpretation tells us to call only true red corundum ruby, and all of the others pink sapphires.  This is a little problematic however because most people outside of the jewelry field think of many shades of dark pink corundum as ruby, and would never think to ask for a “dark pink sapphire.”

Jewelry stores have been marketing light, sparkly pinks as pink sapphire, dark pink to red shades as ruby, and when you see a true red ruby for less than a small fortune, it is likely to be corundum grown in a lab, as the true red is a rare and expensive shade of corundum.

At the bottom of all of this confusion lies one reassuring fact: it’s all basically the same stone.  Your main job is to pick the shade that makes you happy, and at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter if your jeweler called it a ruby or a pink sapphire.

Oh, and the ring in my post?  I listed it for sale as a ruby…..but pink sapphire would be just as accurate, if not more so.

I’ve still got a good handful of custom orders in progress, but here’s a sneak preview of where I’m going to be focusing my efforts this spring and early summer:

• Guaged earrings, for those of you with stretched piercings.  Look for a variety of designs, starting with 12, 10, and 8 guage.  I’ll be offering a growing selection in both single earrings and pairs.
• More rings featuring beautiful faceted colored gemstones.
• Additions to my popular but currently woefully sold out Galaxy Series.
• Fair trade/ecofriendly items featuring recycled silver, fair trade gems, and stones cut in the US.

Prices of stones tend to rise exponentially as their size increases.  This is because of two factors.  First, larger patches of gem-quality material that can be cut into a faceted stone are rarer than smaller ones, so for most stones there is a smaller supply of larger sizes.  For example, a .5 carat stone might cost 25.00 a carat, while a 1 carat gem of the same material might cost 100.00 a carat.

Second, the larger stone weighs more…and remember how much the price per carat just jumped?  These factors help explain why size can make a tremendous difference between an affordable stone and an out-of-reach one.

What’s a good compromise size on a budget?  I’m partial to 4mm.  Any smaller than that and it becomes difficult to truly make out the stone’s color and brilliance, but at 4mm they show up nicely.  Weight varies from stone to stone, but the weight of a 4mm stone is usually somewhere around .5 carat.  Many colored gemstones can be had in a 4mm size for anywhere between $10-40.00, and you can even get a decent ruby or sapphire for under or around $100.00.

In the 4mm range, your choice of gemstone often won’t make more than a $5-20.00 difference in the cost of your custom piece.

If you really want a precious stone on a tight budget, consider a 3mm ruby, emerald, or sapphire.  This is pretty tiny and won’t make for a flashy display…but if you have personal or sentimental reasons for wanting the stone, one can be yours for $25-40.00.

If you want a large stone at an affordable cost, don’t despair.  There are a number of very nice gems which are common enough and occur in large enough formations that your bling won’t cost you a month’s salary.  Taking an 8mm stone as an example, I can easily get my hands on nice amethyst, citrine, blue, pink, or white topaz, sometimes garnet and labradorite.

If you love colored gemstones but don’t have a fortune to spend on that cocktail ring in the jeweler’s window, don’t despair.  Thanks to some little-explained quirks of the gem trade, you may be able to indulge in the color and sparkle you love without taking out a second mortgage on the house!

Ever look around at the prices of loose gemstones online and been completely baffled?  Ever wondered why one site has a sapphire for $50.00 and another for $50,000?  It all has to do with rarity.  

Should I not have said quality, you ask?

Not really.  Quality tends to be an abstract when it comes to colored stones.  Pricing factors include availability, demand, color, size, cut, clarity, origins, and treatment.  I plan to go into some of these factors in more detail in a later article; my point for this one is simple: beautiful gemstones need not cost a fortune.

If there is a certain color you love, you may be happy to find that there is a lesser known or less traditional stone that will provide just what you are looking for.  Aquamarine is a costly stone, but many shades of aquamarine are well emulated by blue topaz.  Emeralds cost a fortune, but chrome diopside provides beautiful, rich green and great clarity at a fraction of the cost.

If it’s a particular, precious stone that is important to you, for example a birthstone, you may find that even precious gems can be affordable in smaller sizes, for instance in the 3-5mm range.  That will, given the right setting in a ring, give you the beauty and the stone you want without bankrupting you.

I love colored gems and would be happy to guide you to a choice that works within your taste and your budget; I welcome custom orders and have both a large inventory of beautiful, reasonably priced gems and some excellent sources for anything you might want me to order.

By the way….the beautiful chrome diopside ring shown in the photo above is available through my etsy shop for only $100.00!  Take a peek!

Sleek and modern, this sterling silver cuff with chain strikes me as Tiffany meets Goth Girl. It is made of highly polished solid sterling silver, with soldered links and a handmade, soldered clasp. A versatile piece that can go from the office to the club without blinking. (more…)

Want to read my tweets about life, sci-fi fandom, cats, and jewelry making?  You’ll be the first to hear about new designs (although I do try to keep the spam down and write moderately interesting things too) on Twitter.

I have a weakness for anything blue, and if it’s a blue sapphire…well, enough said!  This is my latest ring, in size 6 1/4 with a beautiful 4mm natural blue ceylon sapphire.  I got a great deal on this gem, and that’s reflected in the really affordable price for this ring.  

It’s listed on my etsy site at just $65.00 – snag it while you can!  http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=21866384