Rebecca Zemans Jewelry Blog — chalcedony

Special occasions call for personalized design.  Jewelry is often a gift given to commemorate significant times in our lives - engagements, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, push presents, and other milestones.     Without needing to go fully bespoke in design, the Family Jewelry Collection is a selection of our most popular jewelry designs showcasing birthstones.  Featuring elegant pendants and modern stacking rings, this collection has something to represent all the meaningful people of your life. All of these designs are able to be tailored to the amount and variety of stones to suit you needs, and forged in the recycled metal of your choice.  Click here...

Wow! It's been a busy year becoming a new mom and keeping up with customers. I'm excited to pick up the blog where we left off...The alternative birthstone for the month of October is agate, a member of the quartz family. Agate is a variety of the chalcedony quartz, which forms in concentric layers in a wide variety of colors, textures and patterns. Because of that vast variety in colors and patterns, many agates have their own specific trade names such as carnelian or sardonyx, as with in our Large Suspended Lightyear Pendant. Agate forms by filling a cavity in...

Often known for it's red-brown color, the alternative birthstone of July is the beautiful carnelian. Carnelian is a zodiac birthstone for the signs of Leo and Virgo and has been said to promote inner vitality and joy. The carnelian is a commonly available microcrystalline quartz. It is considered a chalcedony, made up of silicon dioxide colored by different levels of iron impurities which makes them come in many warm colors ranging from a pale orange to a dark brown. Often, the stones have been heat treated to make their color more intense. This stone got its name from the Latin...

The traditional birthstone for the month of May is the emerald, a beautiful gemstone known for its deep green color. Some of us cannot afford emeralds or might be looking for more variety in color. Chalcedony, the alternative birthstone for May, offers both. Chalcedony is a term that includes several varieties of cryptocrystalline quartz gemstones rather than one specific gemstone itself. The chalcedony is very common and can be found in all 50 United States. It also comes in a variety of colors, shapes and transparencies. The word chalcedony comes from the Latin word chalcedonius, which was first used in...

An alternative birthstone for March is Jasper, a gemstone known for its many colors and its beautiful and unique patterns. Jasper is often thought to be part of the chalcedony class of gemstones. However, it can contain up to 20% foreign material, which results in the beautiful patterns. This makes Jasper considered a group of its own. The Jasper is a 6.5 on the Mohs scale of hardness, which makes it a fairly hard gemstone.  The Jasper rarely comes in one uniform color. Most of the time these gemstones have streaks or spots of other colors, which results in many names for the...