#birthstones | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reddpenn · 7 months

Note

Here is a potentially silly question: how do you feel about birthstones? Do you think they fit the months (by season or astrological sign)? Do you have other stones you'd rather see as birthstones?

Okay, so, birthstones make absolutely no sense.

I mean, look at this mess. We’re doing beryl and corundum twice! I get that they get Special Different Names for their Special Different Colors, but it's just lazy. And why are we giving some months cheap, common gemstones like garnet and amethyst while the poor June birthdays have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for FREAKING ALEXANDRITE? That’s incredibly unfair! We should be picking birthstones that are all roughly the same price. And why do some months get multiple gemstones? I’ll tell you why: because nobody can agree on an official list and every attempt to standardize this thing has just added MORE birthstones to every month.

So obviously the answer is to standardize it again, by throwing out everything and starting over. Here are our goals:

Fair pricing. You should be paying roughly the same amount regardless of what month you were born in. We’re getting rid of those ridiculous outliers like diamond and alexandrite.

More customization potential! Nobody should be stuck with a stone they hate. We’re picking gemstones that come in multiple colors or varieties, so that everyone can choose a variant they like.

Wearability. Some birthstones are too fragile to be worn as jewelry. We need to replace them with stronger stuff.

No more duplicate gemstones. Every month gets a stone or family of stones with a unique chemical composition.

Now without further ado, I present to you:

The New And Improved List Of Birthstones With No Problems Or Flaws That Everyone Will Definitely Agree On And We Can Start Using Right Now Immediately

JANUARY: GARNET

I've got no problem with garnet. It's a fine, classic birthstone, so January can keep it. But I would like to see a little more garnet diversity. January birthdays shouldn’t be confined to just red. The garnet family of minerals contains a rainbow of different colors, like orange hessonite, green uvarovite, pink rhodolite, yellow grandite, and many more. They’re all garnet, so we should be wearing them all!

FEBRUARY: QUARTZ

The original birthstone of February was amethyst, which is… kinda boring. Super cheap and common and you only get one color? No, we can do better. February gets ALL the quartzes now. Keep wearing amethyst if you want, but also feel free to branch out into clear quartz, citrine, rose quartz, smoky quartz, rutilated quartz, tiger eye… actually, take all the agates too. If it’s quartz, it’s yours!

MARCH: SPODUMENE

March was originally aquamarine, but I’ll be giving all the beryls to May, so we need a different stone here. Let’s stick with that theme of pale pastels and go with spodumene. For an April birthday, bedeck yourself in green hiddenite, pink kunzite, or yellow triphane. Despite its subtle colors, your birthstone has some amazing fluorescence, with really cool pinks and oranges under a UV light.

APRIL: FELDSPAR

Diamond is too pricy for this list, so we’re replacing it with something less expensive and way more interesting. April will now be represented by the feldspar family. We’re talking labradorite, moonstone, amazonite, aventurine, and sunstone. While you don’t have much variety in color, your stones are full of shimmery schiller which glitters and shifts as it catches the light.

MAY: BERYL

May’s original birthstone was emerald, which is great and can stay, but we’re also adding its siblings! May is now represented by all beryls: Emerald, Aquamarine, Morganite, Bixbite, Heliodor, Goshenite, and whatever other varieties I’m forgetting to list. A bright and saturated rainbow of colors is represented here, so everyone born in May is sure to find something they like.

JUNE: ORGANIC GEMSTONES AND FOSSILS

It’s time to address the alexandrite in the room, and obviously we’re getting rid of alexandrite. A stone worth $15,000 to $70,000 a carat does not belong on the same list as friggin amethyst. Instead we’ll look at the other traditional June birthstone, pearl. The problem with pearl is that it’s a clear outlier in this list. An organic gemstone, by some definitions not even a mineral. Should we replace it? NO. We are OWNING it. All organic gemstones now belong to June. Pearl is joined here by jet, amber, coral, ivory, ammolite, petrified wood… in fact, June can have every fossil ever.

JULY: SPINEL

July was originally represented by ruby, which is a fine stone and won’t be kicked off the birthstone list - we’re just shuffling it down to September. Replacing ruby for July is spinel. (See, it’s funny because historically spinel has often been mistakenly identified as ruby! That's a little gemology humor for you.) Available in any hue you could possibly desire, spinel offers some nice color options to a month that previously only featured red. Of course if you want to keep wearing red, red spinel mimics ruby so well that you’ll barely notice the difference.

AUGUST: PERIDOT

Nope, we’re not changing this one. Peridot is the ideal gemstone and you ungrateful August whiners can die mad about it. HOW ABOUT YOU LEARN TO APPRECIATE PERFECTION

SEPTEMBER: CORUNDUM

Sapphire is a wonderful, classic stone and it deserves its spot on this list. But the corundum family has been separated for far too long, and we’re finally going to reunite them. Joining sapphire in September is its sister ruby. Between the pinks and reds of ruby and the many, many colors of sapphire, these two stones give September a nice variety of colors.

OCTOBER: TOURMALINE

Look, as gorgeous as opal is and as much as I love it, it is both way too pricy for our list and also TERRIBLE in jewelry. This stone is just too brittle to wear around from day to day and can be ruined just by getting it wet, which makes wearing your birthstone a huge hassle. We’ll kick opal out and hang on to October’s other traditional birthstone, tourmaline. Pink tourmaline may be classic, but this stone comes in plenty of other colors. Whether it’s brown dravite, watermelon elbaite, or the rare and beautiful blue indicolite, you can wear them all!

NOVEMBER: TOPAZ

November can keep topaz, but we’re not confining it to the color yellow. This stone comes in a huge variety of colors, and now they can ALL represent November. No further notes; it’s a nice, classic stone.

DECEMBER: ZIRCON

I dunno, I’ve had to come up with 12 of these, I’m burnt out. Sure, zircon, whatever.

“BUT WAIT,” you say. “Now instead of having a single color assigned to each month, almost every month is represented by almost every color, making it impossible to tell anyone’s birthstones apart and removing what made them special and recognizable as symbols!”

Well CLEARLY you didn’t read the title of this list.

#birthstones #talkin' bout rocks

16K notes · View notes

thesimline · 2 months

Text

Welcome back to the glitz and glamour of the 1920s birthstone lookbook! After hair, jewellery is my favourite CC to hunt for so these ensembles were so much fun for me to put together. Want more good time gals and fabulous flappers? You can check out part one here.

Ruby is one of the most expensive gemstones and with its rich red colour it isn't hard to see why. Rubies have long been connected with physicality and strength, thought to be intimately connected with the human body.

Peridot is one of my favourite stones thanks to its gorgeous yellow-green hue. Because of this lively appearance they were often thought to protect their wearer at night.

Sapphire is considered a protective gemstone. They may shield the wearer from physical harm, as well as bad intentions and envy. It was also thought that sapphires had medicinal properties.

Opal is an incredibly unique gemstone with its multi-coloured appearance. Opals are associated with light and magic, with some crediting them with healing properties.

Topaz comes from the Sanskrit word for fire, which is reflected in its vibrant and rich orange-yellow colour. It is believed that topaz worn above the heart assures long life, beauty and intelligence.

Blue Topaz actually comes out of the ground colourless or pale blue. A two-step heat and radiation laboratory treatment is then used to turn these stones vivid blue.

With thanks to some amazing creators: @leeleesims1 @pralinesims @sentate @batsfromwesteros @glitterberrysims @madlensims @zurkdesign @delis-sims @jius-sims @thesimsis4gays @javitrulovesims @simadelics @lizziksims @trillyke @aveirasims

#ts4 #ts4 cc #ts4 cc cas #the sims 4 #the sims #1920s cc #1920s #20s #20s fashion #1920s fashion #ts4 decades challenge #ts4 historical #sims 4 decades challenge #decades lookbook #1920s lookbook #crystal creations #gemstone #birthstones #flapper

238 notes · View notes

sofubis · 1 year

Text

Negora Aquamarine (konatsuya)

#birthstones #negora #konatsu #sofubi

451 notes · View notes

natureselements · 3 months

Text

‘Stay Batty out there yall’🦇 I handmade these with silver and precious gemstones, slightly obsessed ✨ shop here only 3 left until I make more this week!

60 notes · View notes

planterfulpieces · 2 months

Text

(So I love dragons. But tying it to Planterful was hard until I remembered geology existed and is part of the natural world. But then I had the issue of any kind of cohesive story grouping this and future releases together. Hence birthstones. But anyway. Here ya go.)

It's the Year of the Dragon according to the Chinese Zodiac. And we love dragons! What better way to introduce our Birthstone Series than that, we ask you?

There isn't one. We know. It's fantastic timing.

Each month we'll be releasing a new color for our Baby Gemstone Dragon and Egg that corresponds to its birthstone. For February, it's Amethyst.

And yes, we did skip January. That's because Chinese New Year is in February, so you won't see January's dragon rounding out the year till January 2025!

As a side note, we had a fantastically fun time taking photos of him. He's so shiny, it's unbelievable.

He's available for purchase on our site, or on Etsy at PlanterfulPieces!

(One more product drop tentatively scheduled for end of this month, and then I got several things coming this spring! I'm so excited to show you!)

44 notes · View notes

americangirlstar · 9 months

Text

American Girl - February Amazing Amethyst Outfit for 18-inch Dolls

#american girl #american girls #american girl dolls #truly me #february #amethyst #birthstone collection #birthstones #mine

59 notes · View notes

sunsolii · 4 months

Text

Napoleon's Marshals and their Birthstones Part 1

This is a three-part series where I'll be listing the birthstones of all 26 marshals. Part one will cover months January-April, the next post will cover March-August and the last post will cover the remaining 4 months. I'll mainly be focusing on the gemstone's physical and chemical properties as well as writing "short" facts about each gemstone. Before starting the list, I'll provide the definitions of some terms that will be used through the post.

_________________________________________________

Mineral: A naturally occurring solid which contains a crystalline structure that is made up of a single native element or multiple chemical compounds.

Mohs Scale: A scale system used to measure the scratch resistance of a mineral ranging from 1 (softest) to 10 (hardest). This is done by scratching a mineral with another mineral or with another object like a penny or nail.

Cleavage: The way in which a mineral breaks along the softest plane. Classification of a cleavage ranges from perfect, good, poor, indistinct, to none. A mineral can have a basal, prismatic, cubic, rhomboherdal, octahedral, or dodecahedral cleavage.

Fracture: The texture or shape of a mineral's surface. Some types of fractures are described as conchoidal (ripples), earthy (resembles broken soil), hackly (jagged fractures), uneven, and splintery (resembles splinters).

Luster: The way which light reflects off of a mineral. Minerals can have vitreous (glassy), dull (earthy), adamantine (shiny), greasy, silky, metallic, non-metallic, pearly, resinous, or waxy lusters.

Streak: The color of the powder left behind by a mineral when it is scratched on a piece of unglazed porcelain. The color of the powder is usually different from the mineral's color.

Now, onto the list!!

-------------------------------------------------------------

Garnet (January)

Marshals-Ney and Bernadotte

Type: Mineral

Group: Silicate (SiO₄)₃

Color: red, orange, pink, green, yellow blue (rare)

Cleavage: Indistict

Fracture: Conchoidal to uneven

Mohs Scale: 6.5-7.5

Luster: Vitreous

Streak: White

Fun Fact: Garnet is its own family that contains six main species divided into two groups: pyrope, almandine, and spessartine species, which are part of the aluminum group (aluminum is present in its structure). Colors in the Aluminum group range from red to pink; these are the garnet species people think of when looking for jewelry. When pyrope is mixed with almandine, it creates rhodolite, and when mixed with spessartine, it creates malaya. Grossular, uvarovite, and andradite species are part of the calcium group (Calcium is present in structure) and are composed of green to yellow garnet. Uvarovite is the rarest of the calcium group because it grows in small chunks, making it hard to work with when making it into a gemstone.

Amethyst (February)

Marshals- Mortier

Type: Mineral

Group: Silicate (SiO₂)

Color: Purple to Violet

Cleavage: Indistict to none

Fracture: Conchoidal

Mohs Scale: 7

Luster: Vitreous

Streak: White

Fun Fact: Amethyst is part of the quartz family and it used to be part of the cardinal or most valuable gemstones, along with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, because it was available in small amounts. Its value dropped after large deposits were discovered in Brazil during the 18th century, making it one of the more affordable gemstones.

Aquamarine (March)

Marshals- Brune, Murat, Soult, Suchet

Type: Mineral

Group: Beryl (Be₃Al₂Si₆O₁₈)

Color: Pale blue, light green, bluish-green, sometimes yellow

Cleavage: Indisticnt to none

Fracture: Conchoidal to uneven

Mohs Scale: 7.5-8

Luster: Vitreous

Streak: White

Fun Fact: Aquamarine got its name because its color resembles the sea. It contains small traces of iron, which (depending on the oxidation state) can change its bluish color to green or yellow. These oxidation states are ferrous iron, which gives Aquamarine its blue color, and ferric iron, which gives it a greenish/yellowish color. Heating the mineral removes the greenish color to restore its blue color[1]. Aquamarine also has weak to moderate flourescent properties under UV light [2].

Diamond (April)

Marshals- Jourdan, Lannes, Oudinot, and Saint-Cyr

Type: Mineral

Group: Native mineral (Carbon (C))

Color: Yellow, brown, gray, white, colorless,

Cleavage: Octahedral, Perfect on all sides

Fracture: Uneven

Mohs Scale: 10

Luster: Adamantine

Steak: Colorless

Fun Facts: Diamonds are formed within the Earth's mantle when carbon-rich materials or carbon dioxide are subjected to extreme temperatures and pressure. It reaches the surface via volcanic eruption and gets trapped inside igneous rocks after the magma cools off. The formation of diamonds takes thousands of years, contributing to their high value [3]. Diamonds seen as potential gemstones have little to no impurities or foreign objects within their structure. In contrast, diamonds with high impurities, irregular shapes, and defects are used in commercial industries due to their durability and hardness. Diamonds are the hardest minerals, and are very difficult to scratch or break, but it's not impossible to do so. They also has a high dispersion of white light that creates a rainbow-like effects, also known as 'fire.[4]'

--------------------------------------------------------------

Sources

Garnet: King, H. M. (n.d.). Garnet. geology. https://geology.com/minerals/garnet.shtml

Amethyst: Geary, T.F.; Whalen, D. (2008). The Illustrated Bead Bible: Terms, Tips & Techniques. Sterling Pub. p. 69.

Aquamarine: [1]King, H. M. (n.d.). Aquamarine. geology. https://geology.com/gemstones/aquamarine/

[2]MAT, M. (2023, June 3). Aquamarine: Properties, formation, occurrence " Gemstone. Geology Science. https://geologyscience.com/gemstone/aquamarine/?amp

Diamond: [4]King, H. M. (n.d.). Diamond. geology. https://geology.com/minerals/diamond.shtml

[3]MAT, M. (2023, September 25). Diamond: Properties, formation, occurrence, deposits. Geology Science. https://geologyscience.com/minerals/diamond/

#napoleonic era #napoleon bonaparte #french history #napoleon's mashals #rocks and minerals #gemstone #birthstones #napoleonic wars #sorry for this VERY long post but I had to share my new project of cataloging all of the marshal's birthstones 🥲#I'm dedicating part of my winter break to research minerals and crystals just because :)

26 notes · View notes

getacluu · 3 months

Text

@billiebustupofficial @bbu-fan-blog

Another Billie Bust Up horoscope

Just for fun. 🐐🌂🌈✨

Who is your dance partner? 💃🏻 🕺

Depends on your birthstone.

Garnet 💎 Elaine

Amethyst 💎 Barnaby

Aquamarine 💎 Dutch

Diamond 💎 Billie

Emerald 💎 Hosea Hayes

Alexandrite 💎 Aristotle

Ruby 💎 Dimitri

Peridot 💎 Fantoccio

Sapphire 💎 Z

Tourmaline 💎 Percy

Topaz 💎 Basile

Zircon 💎 Scrimshaw

#billie bust up #bbu #horoscope #birthstones #just for fun

23 notes · View notes

slymewitch · 3 months

Text

If crack were a birthstone what month would it be for?

#birthstones #crack

4 notes · View notes

weeklythings · 2 months

Text

🔮 gemstone of the week: opal

also known as various other names, opal is a mineraloid with variable paracrystalline components. it's a symbol of hope, purity and truth, also the birthstone of october.

#opal #gemstone of the week #gemstones #gemstone #gem #gems #stone #precious stone #precious stones #stones #birthstone #birthstones #october

5 notes · View notes

oreinochora · 5 months

Text

#hindu #birthstone #birthstones #userboxes #userbox #january #february #march

5 notes · View notes

thesimline · 2 months

Text

To coincide with the recent release of the Crystal Creations pack I wanted to put together a couple of fun lookbooks inspired by birthstones. My mind first went to whimsigoth, but since I've already done one of those recently I instead went with the decade that oozed glittery glamour - the 1920s. Want more good time gals and fabulous flappers? You can check out part two here.

Garnet was believed to be a protective stone, which made it popular amongst warriors and royalty. Red variety garnets are also associated with vitality, love and light.

Amethyst was favoured by the ruling class thanks to its purple colour, which has long been a hue connected to royalty. Over time it has also come to be associated with spirituality, mental clarity and healing.

Aquamarine comes from the Latin word for seawater and as such, was thought to protect seafarers. The stone can also be associated with martial happiness and superior intellect.

Diamond is probably the most well known of the precious gems. Because of their association with strength and eternal love, they're a popular choice for engagement and wedding rings.

Emerald has a legend that says wearing it will imbue the wearer with heightened intelligence and objectivity. Others use the stone to promote healing, while some even believe it allows the wearer to predict the future.

Pearl is often valued for its unblemished surface and colouring, so naturally it is most commonly connected to qualities like honesty, purity and wisdom.

With thanks to some amazing creators: @glitterberrysims @simmister @batsfromwesteros @sentate @jius-sims @qwertysims @nell-le @rimings @yakfarm @simsonico @serenity-cc @simandy @the-melancholy-maiden @trillyke