Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Birthstones

Yesterday, we travelled home from Maryland. Good, safe trip. I took a blogging day off.

One of the things people like to give as gifts is jewelry with birthstones. It is a more personal gift and usually very appreciated.

If you do a "Google" search for Birthstones, you will get many choices. With in the choices you will find some disagreement in what specific Birthstone that fits each month. To simplify things, I chose the list of Swarovski crystals. That fits better into my jewelry making anyhow. Most months are pretty much the same in each list. April isn’t a diamond but (clear) crystal. October has a few choices as does December and June. Other choices for October are Opal, Light Rose and Green Tourmaline. For December other choices are Turquoise and Light Sapphire. For June, Pearl is another choice.








Most chain maille jewelry can have Swarovski crystals added to make a birthstone piece. Of course you can make a bracelet or necklace of just Swarovski crystals with some spacers

Another idea is Family, Grandmother or Mother's bracelets. Having the color of each birth month of each child. Here is an example of one with the child's name and October birthstone, sapphire.



Think of the people on your gift list (remember, the holidays are quickly coming). Would someone appreciate birthstone jewelry? For some ideas check out my website at http://www.bevsjewelry.com/ and browse the selections available. You can design one of your own that will be special to the recipient.

B

5 comments:

  1. Yep. That's why I was called Pearl. It is the jewel for the month I was born, June.

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  2. I wish Swarovski would make beads with large enough holes to fit on the gauge jump rings I use. I can't afford to go to a smaller gauge because then the pieces would be flimsy, but I would love to put crystals directly on the jump rings.

    Good piece on the colors of crystals that correspond to birthdays!

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  3. Miachelle,
    I agree that it would be nice to have larger holes to add to jump rings. I made a bracelet once with 3 mm silver rounds on jump rings. I think it was 20 gauge. It wasn't very satisfactory since, as you pointed out, the gauge was not strong enough to hold its shape with the extra strain of the beads. I did find some beads with larger holes but didn't use a large gauge (Dind't have any at the time) Hole size is very important sometimes.
    Bev

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  4. I'm a sapphire.

    My mother had these beautiful sapphire earrings made for me...they are surrounded by diamonds...and they have a ring to go with them that matches. She used to wear them while I was too young too. Then she gave them to me earlier this year. :)

    "I guess you're old enough for these now," she said.

    I love them with a deep, deep love. :)

    Charity

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  5. Oh, real sapphires. Lucky girl. I'm sure they mean a lot to you now. My birthstone is Peridot. Not a particularly pretty color I've always thought. Then I started adding aquamarine with them and now I really like it.
    B

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