My Foray into Four-Ray Stones

For Glamorinky Friday #15 your game was to find the name of a black stone with a naturally occurring 4-rayed star on its surface. The star is only visible at a certain angle and my photo didn’t capture it, so I gave a lot of hints about a three-word search for a three-word name. My final clue was that the stone wasn’t sapphire. Many of you figured it out and put “black”, “star”, and “4-rayed” into a search engine and found the answer on the first try; black star diopside.

There are two types of diopside used in
jewelry: black star diopside aka black star of India, shown above, and chrome diopside, seen in the photo at right. Black star diopside is chatoyant, which means it exhibits a star or cat’s eye. It looks similar to black star sapphire, but that has a six-rayed star while the diopside's is four-rayed. Chrome diopside is a deep green stone I use quite a lot because it has the rich emerald color without the richer emerald price. Diopside in cabochon form is readily available, but beads can be hard to find in stores. My current stash is from a foray at a recent trade show. Bead shows are competitive so scoring several strands was a real coup.

One name was drawn from the pool of correct entries, and the winner of Glamorinky Friday #15 is MARE! Your prize is one pair of the black star diopside earrings with grey pearls set in sterling ear wires.
They measure 1.5" long and sell for $40.

Congrats again MARE! Email me your address and I’ll send your prize!

Now before I go...I've been dealing with gremlins lately. You may have noticed that after the November 13th post my photos weren't so great - that's because my main computer bit the dust on November 14th, and with everything boxed and moved for the construction on our house I have no idea where my program disks are. Sooo, I've been using my back-up laptop but now that died last night. I'm on my husband's computer now, but I can't tie it up because he's a journalist and he uses it for work 24/7. I will be checking in several times daily to take jewelry orders and do other Glamorosi business, but I won't be able to work with photos for blog posts and Glamorinky games until I have a computer of my own. If you subscribe to this blog you'll get an email when I'm up and running. If you don't subscribe then be sure to check back often - it won't be too long.

XO, Glamorosi