The Crystal, Mineral, Gemstone Shop Est. 2000
crystals and minerals, latest and information.
Loving this smokey quartz polish point, not only is it great quality crystal it also has phantom and various other inclusions as well as some hematite, the more you study it the more you see and feel. The rough smokey quartz gets hand selected from Madagascar then cut and hand polished by skilled craftsmen.
Have put it away in stock so I don’t get too tempted!
Did you see this stunning geometric dodecahedron carved from clear quartz, on closer examination it has a rainbow inclusion in the shape of a triangle, so potential an imprint of part of a crystal point.
Good picture taking is essential, however they need to be realistic, you don’t want to receive a mineral for it not to look like the image we show. We don’t have a professional photographer or even an amateur one, but we’ve tried to learn techniques that work. Ok so we did buy a big camera lots of lights and a light tent, not sure where they are now!
However we did go back to basics and use a ‘small’ camera that had a custom white balance, white and black backgrounds, painted white wall for larger items and some daylight bulbs. We do experiment, using clear perspex or glass to remove a base etc.
Labradorite has beautiful colours and patterns however the colours only show with light reflecting at certain angles, sometimes different colours with different light angles. So lots of twisting turning and head scratching can be involved, however these papillion certainly don’t disappoint but frustrate a little!
Some
times the camera captures more than a picture of a stone, look at this wonderful herkimer diamond from the USA.
It’s always a won
der what you can find in quartz, just this week we have a beautiful rainbow inclusion within this quartz crystal ball.
Hematite with quartz producing a vivid red orange colour.
Actinolite within this quartz pebble from Madagascar
After the initial dread of a tidy up its always nice to uncover a few forgotten crystals, 
like this tourmaline from staknala, unique crystal with colour zoning and smaller zoned crystal on the top….currently listed on earthly gems here
Lovely Lapis Lazuli polished one side with the other left as natural sparkly pyrite.
Back to ‘stone stuff’ a while ago from certain folk there was a huge demand for water trapped within quartz due to it’s alleged purity, occasionally we’d see a few but now after a little closer examination we have a batch available, here a couple of samples. Click on the pics to see larger images, we’ve but a red cross below the ‘bubble’. The bubbles on these two actually move when you turn the crystal side to side. Obviously water isn’t the only liquid that is captured inside quartz. Occasionally we have points with oil inside which fluoresces under UV light(if you’re looking to buy one of these from ‘a dealer’ note that if the label says petroleum the price maybe be higher than a comparable ‘oil’ one).
Currently a favourite of mine, I think the shape and formation of sapphire crystals are very intriguing.
This particular blue sapphire has an unusual twin termination on it’s tip.
Another favourite is this purple colour sapphire chunk again from Sri Lanka
This gorgeous material is from the fossil shells of the ammonite families of 
Placenticeras meeki and Placenticeras intercalare. This organic gemstone is predominately comprised of Aragonite which has been preserved naturally. Under different conditions the aragonite would have changed to calcite. Only really commercially mined since 1979. Its an amazingly vibrant material which is still relatively new to the market.
Most valued pieces are those with vibrant colours, fragmented or skin like appearances are common. However we’re finding that they all look great!
We currently have silver ammolite jewellery and ammolite pieces, rough fragments and chunks are on their way!