I’ve been helping a friend with a moonstone project for a while, serving as her personal shopper at times, and acting as a sort of consultant at other times. I have always loved moonstone with a blue sheen to it because it looked so mysterious and almost magical, but I have never bought one or owned one. In the process of helping her look, I have learned a lot about what makes an excellent moonstone. I also ended up buying one of my own.
Ideal moonstones are translucent, and have good blue shimmer. The best ones have a blue shimmer no matter what angle it’s viewed at. Moonstone is a pretty cheap gemstone in general, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find an excellent one.
As usual, for part of this journey, I enlisted my amazing friend Erin of Willajune Jewelry for excellent company and another set of eyes. I may have been pestering her to feature her here on my blog…more on that a little later.
These were three stones that I pulled for my friend. I preferred the left oval for her, but went out on a limb with the right oval. She wasn’t looking for a moonstone that showed a full rainbow, just wanting one that showed blue. So the right was dismissed almost immediately.
I discovered that taking pictures of these stones is really quite difficult, even more so than your average faceted stone.
These stones are super deep.
So the middle stone was the top choice…until I put it on my hand. Which was when I noticed the dark inclusions. Before this, they had been on the black velvet, where these were totally camouflaged.
This pear moonstone ended up being the one that she liked the most, but in the end she still wasn’t completely enamored.
So it came home with me. Erin is actually going to set this into a necklace for me at some point.
Basic quick sketches I was playing with for it. I will probably give it up to Erin to figure it out though.
And now, from the same shopping trip, some random pictures of sapphires I took while we were there. This one is a larger blue sapphire that has a lot of silk, and a couple inclusions/indented naturals that some might think mar the appearance of the stone, but I love the color, so I don’t think I’d complain about the inclusions on this one.
A pair of pale blue sapphires totaling over 13.5 carats. I’m dying to go back, grab these and design a pair of really awesome earrings around them.
You might recognize the purple sapphire in this photograph. It is the same sapphire as in this post.
So, as I hinted at in the beginning of this post, I WILL have an upcoming post talking about Erin and willajunejewelry, so be on the lookout for that in a near future post!
The Gemstone Project 