Jewelry School

Jewelry School

STERLING

SILVER - Designated by .925 is an alloy of 92.5% pure silver

and 7.5% other metals, usually copper, for strength. The designation of .925 indicates that of 1,000 units of metal, 925 are pure silver and the remaining 75 parts are alloy.

AuraStella offers only nickel free sterling silver. Some women think they are allergic to sterling silver when in fact very few are actually allergic to silver.

People who believe they are allergic to silver are often actually allergic to nickel. Some other manufactures alloy their sterling with nickel because it is inexpensive.

FINE

SILVER - Is 99.9% pure silver or better. It is usually used to make bullion bars for international commodities trading. Occasionally it is found in jewelry but not common because it is normally considered too soft and requires special alloying.

HIGH

POLISH – Depends on the porosity of silver. Sterling silver has pores just like your skin. If too porous it does not take a high polish.

OXIDATION

– Sterling silver is given a chemical bath then polished to remove some of the darkening. This highlights the texture of the design.

INDONESIAN

CHAIN – Examples C100 Silky, and B113 Significance coral bracelet. This complex process is completely done by hand, from melting silver, to making the silver wire, and ultimately hand weaving the chain.

Stones AGATE

- A form of chalcedony formed from layers of quartz. This is found in many colors and often features color banding.

AMETHYST

- A purple variety of quartz.

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AMBER

– Is fossilized tree resin from prehistoric pine trees and is 30 – 90 million years old. It is very soft !! Amber jewelry should be stored carefully to avoid scratching.

CARNELIAN

– A form of chalcedony, a member of the quartz family.

This is usually a reddish brown color.

CITRINE

– Is a naturally occurring form of quartz ranging in shades of yellow to deep shades of orange. It can form together with amethyst in the same crystal creating a bi-colored stone called ametrine. Almost all available citrine on the market comes from heat treating amethyst crystals.

CORAL

(Sponge) – Sponge coral is a trade name and has nothing to do with sponges. It just looks like a sponge because of its many tiny holes. Sponge coral is different from traditional gem coral which is much harder and highly regulated. Sponge coral is the vacated home of sea polyps.

CZ

– Cubic Zirconia is made from a complex laboratory process using natural earth elements. It is the most popular diamond stimulant. Early versions tended to destabilize and became cloudy.

The process has been perfected and produces affordable stones that are permanently clear and sparkly. CZ is NOT a man made diamond or a synthetic diamond. Synthetic stones are chemically, physically and optically identical to their earth born relatives.

GARNET

- The most common is red or plum/red. It comes in almost every color except blue. It is the birthstone for January and is one of the only gemstones that has no treatment. Noah is said to have steered the ark by a garnet lamp. Jewelry made with garnet has been found in burial sites as early as the Bronze Age (3000 BC.)

IOLITE

– Comes from the Greek word for violet. It is a pleochroic stone featuring two colors, purple and blue, in the same stone. It is often referred to as a water sapphire but is not a sapphire. It has recently become a substitute for tanzanite since the tanzanite mines are almost played out and tanzanite has become regulated and graded like diamonds, making it very expensive.

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JADE

– Most people think of jade as green, but it actually comes in many different colors. Jade is the toughest gemstone and resists breakage. Diamond is the hardest stone but is very brittle.

JASPER

– Jasper is a form of chalcedony, a member of the quartz family. It is found world wide, and comes in all colors and a wide variety of unusual patterns. Examples include green Kambaba jasper from Africa, leopard skin known for its animal print patterns, and lavender jasper.

LABRADORITE

– Is a translucent stone which displays iridescence when viewed from different angles. It is named for Labrador, the original and main source of the Canadian variety.

LAPIS

– Lapis lazuli comes primarily from Afghanistan. It has been

mined for 6,500 years and comes from very remote areas. With the current political unrest this blue stone is increasingly dangerous to acquire.

MOONSTONE

– An opalescent stone that usually ranges from

colorless to silvery sheen pastels. It is an alternate birthstone for June birthstone which is traditionally a pearl. It was used in jewelry by the Romans who thought it was formed from the light of the moon, and is considered a sacred stone in India.

OBSIDIAN

– A naturally occurring glass formed from lava flows. It

resembles a mineral but has a different crystal structure.

ONYX

– A form or quartz. Black onyx is common but not as common as banded onyx, like the white/tan commonly seen in chess sets in Mexico.

OPALS

– Natural opals such as the famous gems from Australia are

rare, expensive and extremely fragile. Many of the opal mines have or are in the process of playing out. Man made opal, formed from PAGE 3 OF 5

crushed opal, is beautiful and much more durable than its natural inspiration.

PEARLS

– Freshwater v. saltwater = MOP bead nucleation v. fleshy

nucleation. Freshwater pearls differ from other cultured pearls in that they are not nucleated with a mother-of-pearl bead. Freshwater mollusks are nucleated by creating a small incision in the fleshy mantle and inserting a piece of mantle tissue from a donor mussel.

Common for one mollusk to be nucleated multiple times yielding more than 20 pearls each. They are returned to freshwater and tended for 2-6 years. The resulting pearls are solid nacre but without the MOP bead to guide the growth they are rarely perfectly round.

They come in a few natural colors but are often dyed from the inside out.

QUARTZ

– The most abundant single mineral on earth. Pure quartz is known as “rock crystal.” Quartz is commonly divided into two categories. (1) Single crystal formations like amethyst, citrine, ametrine, rose quartz, smoky quartz. (2) Fibrous & micro-granular types of quartz include carnelian, chalcedony, various types of agate. Tiger’s eye is a form of chalcedony quartz.

[Swarovski crystals – Are NOT quartz crystals, rather a brand name for lead crystal glass. 32% lead made in Switzerland.]

RUTILITATED

QUARTZ – Quartz is the most common mineral on earth and makes up 12% of the earth’s crust. Rutiles are needle like crystals, the yellow rutiles look like gold thread and are titatnium, a metal used in high tech alloys.

TIGER’S

EYE – A form of brown/gold chalcedony quartz with the property of chatoyantcy, a light play characteristic resembling a cat’s eye.

TOURMALINE

– Name comes from the Sri Lankan word for stone of many colors. It is a crystal mineral that takes its many colors from the elements it forms with, such as aluminum and iron.

TURQUOISE– Turquoise forms when water percolates through rocks that contain copper, aluminum and other minerals. A chemical PAGE 4 OF 5

reaction takes place that results in deposits of what we know as turquoise. That is a simplified way of describing a process that takes millions of years and only happens when a complex set of conditions come together. The blue in turquoise is enhanced when copper is present. Turquoise shades to green when aluminum and other minerals like iron are present.

TURQUOISE

MATRIX – Other minerals that run through the host rock.

The more matrix free the more valuable, however many prefer the more interesting stones including the matrix. Some of the most prized stones come from the Sleeping Beauty mine in Globe, AZ because of the purity of the blue and lack of matrix.

Turquoise is often produced as a by product of giant copper mining operations like in eastern Arizona. When a pocket of bright blue material is uncovered the stones are extracted by hand. Now that copper is so valuable some copper mines are refusing to allow turquoise mining because it slows the mining process. Example: Nacozari Copper Mine in Mexico.

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