(⟡)​ Once I crush all gems into dust, I can be free.

I dont draw marinas kid as much as I should

I was listening 2 corpse bride music hehe

Incredible pink Kunzite crystals available from Afghanistan.

📷 crystals_specimens_king

By LabradoriteKING on Instagram

On the year and half anniversary of my previous gemstone post I bring you brand new gemstone charts from LabradoriteKing.

I never expected the original post to take off. I found these gemstone charts to help me design crowns for the royal family in my Harry Potter au and posted them so I could quickly find them again. Apparently everyone else thought they were useful, too. I hope you find these new charts as useful in your creative endeavors as I will in mine. Which reminds me, I need to work more on my Harry Potter au.

Garnets are known for being a deep red gem but the name garnet refers to the gem family/group of silicate minerals and is much more complex than it first seems. This will be an outline off all those types, going deeper into specific types another time. There won’t be much information here with most of the information being within the specific gems. This is an introduction for soon upcoming rocks. 

The Garnet family/group is known for its bright vibrant colours and are compared to sapphires with how diverse of a gem family it is. Most garnets are not pure, being a blend of not just pure garnet but other minerals and species. 

The gems that the name garnet is referring to most of the time are; Almandine, Andradite, Grossular, Hydrogrossular, Pyrope, Spessartite and Uvarovite. Which will most likely be the next gems covered in order.

Garnet chemical compositions. Image from Lina Jakaitė, Geologist, Vilnius University.

This information is not my own nor are the images, I am not an expert. It was all found from various websites. If this actually gets seen feel free to ask for the websites I use and I will comment all the links. Please let me know if any information is incorrect and provide links to resources if possible :)

Today's Specimen: Taaffeite

Taaffeite occurs in carbonate rocks along with spinel, fluorite, tourmaline, and mica. Taaffeite is similar to spinel, but much lesser known due to it's high rarity. It can be distinguished from spinel by its double refraction, while spinel is only singly refractive. It's discovery in 1945 was because it was mistaken for spinel. A gemologist by the name of Edward Taaffe noticed a cut gem looked slightly different from all the other spinel stones. It remains the first and only gemstone to be discovered after it was already faceted. Taaffeite can be found in a variety of colours, including pink and purple shades, red, brown, blue, green, grey, and colourless. It can be found in various deposits within Sri Lanka, southern Tanzania, and China. Taaffeite has an 8.0-8.5 on the Mohs hardness scale, also very similar to spinel. The major difference between the two stones is taaffeite's birefringence, chemical composition, and crystalline structure (spinel is cubic, taaffeite is hexagonal). Alternate names for taaffeite include: Bemagalite and Taprobanite.

Okay truth time. I had NO clue that this existed. This is Siberite Tourmaline. Found in well, Siberia this purple pretty gets its color from mineral rich environments rich in Manganese.

bought some rings and brought them home to test them so here’s some of the microscope close ups i took. as a treat.

Lace Agate Pair

Cavansite on stilbite – Poona, India

A Home Found in My Galaxy Cupcake - Submitted by SeesawSiya