Opal Jewelry

Between summer vacations and upgrades to our website and servers we've had little time to blog. Everything is going well, we've got several new pieces to add to our line many of which are using Peruvian Opal, so today we'd like to give you a brief look at the history and types of opal that exist.

Opal is considered to be a mineraloid gel that is created under fairly low temperatures, overall this makes most types of opal a bit softer than your average semi-precious gemstones, generally rated 5.5-6.5 on the Mohrs scale of hardness. So you will want to take a little extra care for any jewelry that has opals in it. Opals have a lot of water in them compared to other gemstones, this means they love to be worn a lot as they can maintain their proper humidity from the wearers skin.

There are generally two types of opal, common opals and precious opal, the latter is only named precious because of its atomic build that contains a very predictable crystalline structure that creates that famous opalescent sheen usually in a rainbow of milky colors, however just because of the name it doesn't represent rarity of value compared to some forms of the "common opal".

Opals history is almost as colorful as the stones themselves. For most of history they have been associated with good luck, calmness, and mental clarity. Australian aboriginals believed that the creator of the human race came to earth riding a rainbow and that when he landed his footsteps left the color of the rainbow and thus created the opal stone. To this day opal is the official gemstone for Southern Australia. Opal is the birthstone of October.

In our most recent batch of new jewelry we obtained a small stock of Peruvian opal beads and stones. This opal is relatively rare and is only found in the Andes Mountains near San Patricio, Peru. It is also the national stone of Peru. Here are our newest opal pieces.

• Tranquil Garden Bracelet
• Tranquil Garden Necklace
• Tranquil Garden Earrings