Gemstone

Description & Properties

Amazonite is an iridescent stone that ranges in colour from green to blue-green. Most Amazonite is opaque, but rare crystals are transparent.

Healing Properties: Opens creativity helps one to speak truth and communicate clearly.

Amber is translucent fossilized tree resin (from conifers), a natural hydrocarbon that comes in many colours, including yellow, reddish, whitish, black, and blue.

Healing Properties: Calming stone, stress reliever. Mental clarity, mood balancer, joy, humour, confidence. Detoxification and protection from radiation.

Amethyst is a form of the mineral quartz, and is a relatively common gemstone. Amethyst is usually purple, but can range in colour from pale lavender to a very deep, reddish purple to a milky colour to green. Deeper-coloured amethysts are more highly valued.

Healing Properties: Spiritual awareness, dreaming, dispels nightmares, protection, known as the "sobriety stone", helps break bad habits

Aquamarine

Aquamarine is a transparent, light blue or sea-green stone that is porous. Today, blue aquamarines are more highly valued, but this was not true in the past, when sea-green stones were prized.

Healing Properties: "Stone of courage". Intellectual acuteness, banishes fears, calms nerves and imparts strength and control.

Blue-topaz

Topaz is a very hard gemstone that ranges in colour from brown, to yellow to blue to pink. Pink topaz is usually created by irradiating common yellow topaz. Other colours are often created by heat-treating and/or irradiating topaz. Imperial topaz is golden orange-yellow topaz; it is the most valuable topaz.

Carnelian

Carnelian (also called cornelian and carneole) is a reddish form of chalcedony (a type of quartz). This translucent stone has a waxy lustre.

Healing Properties: Reproduction, sexuality, menstrual cramps, lungs, asthma, arthritis, creative visualization, stimulates emotions.

Cats-eye

Cat's eye is a yellow to green-yellow to grey-green stone with a bright, pupil-like slit that seems to move slightly as the stone is moved.

Chalcedony

Chalcedony is a family of minerals that are often milky to grey to bluish in colour. Chalcedony includes agate, carnelian (waxy red), chalcedony (blue), chrysoprase (green), onyx (black and white), bloodstone, sard (brownish-red), jasper (hornstone), seftonite, and others.

Citrine

Citrine is a rare, yellow type of quartz, a semi-precious stone that ranges in colour from pale yellow to orange to golden brown.

Coral

Coral is an animal that grows in colonies in the ocean. Coral ranges in colour from pale pink (called angelskin coral) to orange to red to white to black. The most valued colours are deep red (called noble coral) and pink.

Crystal

Crystal is high-quality glass containing at least 10% lead oxide. Lead added to the melt produces very clear glass resembling rock crystal. Crystal is coloured by adding various metallic oxides to the melt.

Diamond

Diamonds are precious, lustrous gemstones made of highly-compressed carbon. Diamonds are one of the hardest materials known. Colours of diamonds range from colourless, yellow, orange, brown, to almost black. Rarer colours are red, blue, green, and purple; these colours (called fancies) are quite valuable. Canary diamonds have a deep yellow colour.

Fluorite

A soft mineral (calcium fluoride) that is fluorescent in ultraviolet light; chief source of fluorine. White or colourless, blue, blue-green, yellow, brownish-yellow, or red.

Garnet

Garnets are any of a group of semi-precious silicate stones that range in colour from red to green (garnets occur in all colours but blue). Red garnet is the birthstone for January.

Iolite

Iolite also known as water sapphire and lynx sapphire is a transparent, violet-blue, light blue or yellow-grey mineral.

Jade

Jade is a semi-precious stone that ranges in colour from green to white to lilac to brown to almost black. Translucent jade is more highly valued than opaque jade.

Kyanite

Kyanite is a deep sapphire blue, green, Gray, or white gemstone. The colour is not always uniform; it can be blotchy or in streaks. The crystals are crystals are transparent to translucent.

Labradorite

Labradorite is a fairly abundant greyish mineral that has brilliant flashes of colour (usually green, blue or red) after it is polished.. The crystals are transparent to translucent. There is a darker variety of labradorite (called "black moonstone") which has bluish inclusions.

Moonstone

Moonstone is a semi-translucent stone. It is usually whitish-blue, but can be colourless, yellow, orange, grey, or even reddish.

Onyx

Onyx is a semi-precious stone that is black and white, generally arranged in layers. Onyx is a species of chalcedony.

Opalite

A human-made opalized glass resin that is fused with metal to create an opalescent effect.

Pearl

Cultured pearls come in a wide range of colours. They should be relatively free of skin blemishes. The more perfectly round the shape the better. Pearl is the birthstone for the month of June. It is also the accepted anniversary gemstone for the third and 30th years of marriage.

Peridot

Peridot is a yellow-green semi-precious stone with an oily lustre; peridot is a transparent, green form of olivine. Peridot exhibits double refraction; when you look through the stone, things appear double.

Rock crystal

Rock crystal is a transparent, crystalline mineral. Rock crystal is the purest form of quartz and a semi-precious stone.

Quartz

Quartz is a crystalline mineral that come in many forms, including amethyst, aventurine, citrine, opal, rock crystal, tiger's eye, rose quartz and many others.

Rose-quartz

Rose quartz is a form of quartz that ranges in colour from pink to deep red.

Topaz

Topaz is a very hard gemstone that ranges in colour from brown, to yellow to blue to pink. Pink topaz is usually created by irradiating common yellow topaz. Other colours are often created by heat-treating and/or irradiating topaz.

Tourmaline

Tourmaline is a gemstone that comes in many, many different colours; it also appears to have different colours depending on the angle at which it is seen. Tourmaline has the greatest colour range of any gemstone - the lighter colours are more valuable than the darker colours. It ranges in colour from pink to green to red to purple to blue-green to colourless to black.

Turquoise

Turquoise is a non-translucent, porous semi-precious stone. Turquoise ranges in colour from robin's egg blue to green. Over the years, oil from your skin is absorbed by the stone and it will change colour slightly.

White-topaz

Topaz is a very hard gemstone that ranges in colour from brown, to yellow to blue to pink. Pink topaz is usually created by irradiating common yellow topaz. Other colours are often created by heat-treating and/or irradiating topaz.