Garnets are a Girl's Best Friend

My last image was an orange sapphire. This one is a blue tiger eye. Mmmmm ... blue tiger eye. Might as well start out that way.

Tiger Eye
For a long time they thought that tiger eye only came in orange/yellow and then they found some blue tiger eye in Romania. Cool eh? Anyway, I was desperately looking for a way to give Naria or Eriya a tiger eye as their gem stone, but shoot - the mythology was all wrong and it didn't matter how I wrapped my brain around it. It just didn't suit my purposes.

Citrine
One time I had a woman in a jewerly store tell me that topaz and citrine were the same gem, and those were just different names for them. NOT TRUE. I didn't tell her she didn't know what the heck she was talking about because I wasn't 100% sure that they weren't closely related. So, I just let her talk. I mean, she did work there. They aren't the same thing at all. Citrine is cheap compared to topaz. However, most of the citrine I've seen is a lighter colour of yellow and therefore - more beautiful to me. Yellow topaz has always seemed darker to me and more like the colour of ... something unpleasant. Anyway - topaz has a hardness of 8 whereas citrine has a hardness of 7.

Amber
As you all know - amber is not a gem stone, but actually petrified tree sap. If you touch it - it feels weird - like rubber. It's also not cold to the touch, but warm. The mythology is killer interesting on it, but I won't get to explain it as much as I want to for 'Mark of a Goddess' *cry*. Anyway, if anyone is interested, it's actually not impossible to get amber with bugs trapped inside (like in 'Jurassic Park'). You can easily get your hot little hands on one if you're interested.

Garnets
Dark red, like blood, like the colour of my heart, my soul, my love. I hate the colour red, so naturally, garnets are my birth stone. I think I own four of them, and they're not very interesting because they're so small. If anyone tries to sell you an 'Arizona Ruby' or a 'Montana Ruby' - they actually mean a garnet, so it's okay to go for the cheaper price.

Peridot
I don't really have anything interesting to say about peridots except that their colour is far more to my liking than emeralds. I really hate emeralds. I don't know where it came from, but ew - I really hate emeralds. These guys are closer to green khaki, and they're not as precious, so you can buy massive ones.

Moonstones
I think that moonstones and tiger eye look similar in the way that they reflect light. If you have a circular or an oval shaped stone than it either looks like a crescent moon or an eye whose pupil follows you wherever you go. But they're not actually very alike. Rainbow moonstones don't usually have the crescent in the same way as the grey, green, and coral coloured stones. But I have found that a moonstone is a really unreliable stone. If whoever is selling it says it's a moonstone, you'll just have to take their word for it - I can't tell the difference. And usually it's hard to tell anyway - there are often variants in the colours and textures of stones.

Pearls
I always thought that pearls were worn on massive ropes down an older woman's chest. Seriously. That's what I thought until I got the chance to wear an actual pearl necklace. I don't think I'd ever seen pearls worn by a real person in my life before. Wow! Real pearls are gorgeous! They're cold to the touch (even though they're made of oyster spit ... sort of) and feel like beads of non-melting ice on your skin.

Loads of Love,
Sapphirefly