When you hear of custom gemstone beaded jewelry what comes to your mind? Yes, as the name implies these are gemstones (precious and semi-precious) that are hand-fashioned, threaded or strung up or crafted to create an adornment. They can be accessories like hair pins or jewelries such as necklaces and bracelets.
Gemstones are extremely fascinating and attractive, their meaning oftentimes mystified. But most of the times, shopping for gemstones and gemstone jewelry pieces can be very confusing. They can be natural, synthetic, genuine, simulated, treated, or a mixture of all these terms. It is of great importance for anyone planning to buy gemstone or is commissioning someone to make custom gemstone jewelry for them to understand some of the basic terms used involving gemstones.
Natural gemstones are gems brought about by nature without interference from humans. By the time they emerge in the form of jewelries, they’ve been cut and polished, or faceted but have not been enhanced, treated or altered in any ways. What’s the difference between natural gemstones and genuine gemstones? All natural gemstones are considered genuine gems, together will all other stones formed by nature, including the gems that have been enhanced or treated to improve their appearance. They are “genuine” or “real” even if they have undergone enhancements or have been altered in some ways.
Similar to any other business, supply and demand plays crucial role in the prices of gemstones. For instance, high quality natural rubies are uncommon but the demand for these gemstones is always high. Some of the places where first-class rubies are mined are in political mayhem, thus, hampering its supply to a great extent. In the same way, colored red garnets are dazzling but they aren’t rare. A flawless natural garnet compared to a ruby of similar quality will surely rate a great deal less.
A large portion of gemstones are treated to boost their appearance. These augmentations allow jewelry makers to improve the marketing power of these stones by making them visually appealing to the eyes. Take into account that although treated gemstones are genuine they are not considered to be natural anymore.
But the one advantage of treatments is that, treatments made gemstone available to the wider population, it lets more of us to own a piece or more of gemstone jewelry pieces, custom or not. Imagine if only naturally “perfect” stones were the only ones sold in the market, it will be absolutely certain that most of us would not have enough money to buy any of them
There are also gemstones called synthetic. Synthetic gemstones share the natural physical traits of a gemstone, chemically and optically speaking. The difference is that these stones are made in laboratories. Older synthetics were quite simple for gemologists to identify — they were frequently too perfect while contemporary synthetic gemstones are harder to detect, but a knowledgeable jeweler or gemologist can usually help.
Jewelry that consists of quality synthetic gems can be equally beautiful as pieces made with natural stones and costs a lot less. Good quality synthetics aren’t automatically inexpensive, but ought to cost a bit less than natural stones of comparable quality. GP
