#heart opal

What has attracted people to opals over the centuries? Colour, colour and more colour! Opals change colour when you look at them from different sides and angles. Sometimes there is little colour at all and you move your head and suddenly a breathtaking burst of brilliant colour flashes from the stone. There are very few natural gemstones which do that.

Unless you are lucky the more you pay the better the quality is. But you can still get the high flashy colours for a lower price if you buy doublets or triplets. These are opal pieces reinforced with a solid backing of colorless opal. A triplet has a clear dome of quartz or other material on top.

Opal starts off as a silica gel which seeps through sedimentary strata and gradually hardens over millions of years and the process of nature. As an opal miner I have occasionally seen opal in this early stage where it is soft. Opals contain a lot of water as much as between 3 and 10 percent. On the Moh's scale of hardness it comes in around 5.5 to 6.5 and that is relatively soft.

Heart opals are classified in several groups:

Black opals which come from the Lightning Ridge area in NSW.

White opals and light opals which come from the Coober Pedy region in South Australia. These types also come from notable areas such as Mintabie and Andamooka.

Boulder opals come from Queensland.

Then there are some other minor areas which produce smaller amounts of high quality opal.

Black opals have a dark base and white opals have a white base whereas Boulder has opal which is on top of or through an ironstone base.

Then you get various levels of blackness you might say. So you might get an opal from either Lightning Ridge or Coober Pedy which has a grey base. That means that the stone has flashes of perhaps bright red and blue or other colours mixed inside of a grey base colour. This grey base might be light grey or almost black. When it reaches a very dark colour we normally call that a black opal. It is like some childrens' marbles that you see.

Then we have Crystal opal. Crystal is transparent but the colours can leap out at you from this clear, see through base. We also have varying degrees of crystal opal. When we cannot see clearly through the crystal then we would classify it as semi crystal.

The secret to exceptional gifting is the thought and emotions that you put into it. When it comes to personalized gift ideas - jewelry in particular, it is all a matter of having the right fashion sense and sensibility. You need to weigh in value and style, and they do not have to work against each other. It is great if you can make them work well with each other.

When it comes to personalized gift ideas - jewelry in particular, you have several choices. You can go for either gold or a silver nameplate. You can also choose from wide range of necklaces, bracelets, anklets, and hoop earrings or studs. Your design considerations for your personal gift ideas - jewelry lines, in particular, need to include the recipient's gender, age, style preference, and skin type.

For example, you cannot consider a silver base for your personalized gift ideas design if the recipient cannot wear metals of a lower quality than gold. If the recipient does not like gold, you need to keep your designs to silver bases as well. Some ethnicities prefer silver to gold because it signifies better luck or good chi for them. If you are giving the gift to a person who has Chinese roots, you'll find that this is the case.

When you think of a pair of earrings for your personalized jewelry gift ideas - jewelry, you need to make sure that the person has pierced or un-pierced ears. This will help you decide on whether you should purchase a clip-on or a more conventional earring design. For birthdays, especially for personalized gift ideas - jewelry with names spelled out and birthstones embedded onto the plate is a popular choice. You should make sure that the gemstones you choose for your particular personalized jewelry design sits well on the metal base of your choice.

As an unwritten rule when you are having pastel colored stones embedded on your personalized gift ideas - jewelry especially, the base should be silver. This is because amethysts, sapphires, and pink quartz blend better with white metals like silver than gold. When you set your personalized gift ideas - jewelry on gold, the better gemstones include emeralds, rubies, and opals. Generally, white or clear gemstones like diamonds and clear quartz blend well with any metal base.

Personalized jewelry gift items for babies should be clean, elegant, simple, and hazard free. You can choose to embed birthstones or your personal name jewelry gifts, just do not have the stones raised. You should also stay far away from dangling pendants if you are giving the gift to a child younger than three years old. This is because the small lose particles of the design are not safe for them to wear.

Make sure that the name you choose to base your personalized gift meant for any age is acceptable for the recipient. If the name is too long and old sounding, and if the recipient of the gift does not use the name much, do not base the design on it. You can use his or her nickname instead. Remember, you want to design a gift that the person is going to wear proudly, and not just hide in his/her closet.