Johnna Crider
I love gems and minerals and love making unique jewelry with them. Every stone has a story of its own whether its a rare stone or a gem that has special persona value.
Here are 10 cool minerals and gemstones that I've created jewelry with.
Shungite is a rare form of carbon that is over 2 billion years old. The only known source is in Russia and it has an array of cool properties from blocking EMFs, grounding and even being the only natural source of a molecular compound known as fullerenes.
Pink Tourmaline is to tourmaline what Morganite is to beryl. It's a beautiful pink gemstone that emanates pure love. It also has a high content of lithium which is soothing and calming.
Green is the rarest color of Kyanite which is often found in blue or black and even cooler this one had pieces of black tourmaline mixed in with it.
Another rare gem, Prasiolite is a green variety of quartz crystal. I've seen some naturally occurring in Amethyst and it is also one of the 23+ minerals found in Auralite 23.
This was one of the coolest mineral/metal mixes I've worked with. It's a combo mix of Chrysocolla with its matrix, Cuprite and the metal, copper, in which Chrysocolla is one of the minor ores of.
Black diamonds are marketed as rare but are pretty common. This one is uncut, unpolished and just a rough bead that I created into a ring. It was used for a friend to propose to his girlfriend.
Auralite 23 is said to have either 23 minerals in the mix or more. Auralite 23 is anoter mix that is pretty old--1.2 to 2 billion. It was formed in teh Meso-proterozoic age. The 23 minerals are:
I was told by a friend once that it sometimes had Prasiolite mixed in with the Amethyst.
Ajoite is another rare one. There are two mines, well one that is still open. The second one, where this one came from, is in South Africa and has been closed for over 20 years. Ajoite is the green mineral you see in that quartz.
It was discovered in Ajo, New Mexico where it gets its name.
Tsavorite Garnet is a rare form of green garnet that gets its color from either vanadium or chromium. Tiffany & Co. gave it the name due to where the mineral was originally found: near the Tsavo National Park in Kenya.
Geodes are so common but each one is unique. You never know what you are going to find inside. This one was a challenge to wrap. It literally has no 'bottom' or area where I would secure it with the wire. I managed to secure it without breaking it, but if you look at the bottom, you can see that it almost looks like I wrapped the air itself.
This is an agate geode and the inclusions inside look like they could be iron. Its a really cool piece.
