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Barrett, I am loving these crystals!!! Excellent material!
~Justin

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Barrett! What color in those crystals - gorgeous!

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Thanks guys!

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Jason:

Those are unbelievable - heated? Yours? Stunning!

NKOTB: LOVE Gene's cutting and the stone's unique color. I would love that one

all mine at one time or another..all heated except for the gold colored one

Lots of beautiful tanzanite from rough to finished stone, some showing red flash, the violet side or the blue.

Gah! I'm never getting one. I couldn't trust myself to get something as gorgeous as all the beauties in this thread - besides which I'm far too clumsy for tanzanite. TDF....honestly, I have great envy.

ChicagoGirl, I bought mine from Lisa Elser, she has wonderful material.

Here's my wife's unheated tanzanite, 2.12 carat.

Goodness! What an incredible array of colour in that stone! Another beauty for sure. Do you know what the cut is?

Sure do, I cut it myself! The design is Jeff Graham's 'Signature #6', checkerboard top with a reflector bottom.

I won't bore you all with photos of my tanzanites but thought you might like to see the non-blue ones. These are all natural/unheated.

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Coloured Tanzanites for PS.jpg (121.25 KiB) Viewed 166 times

LD: I'm going to torture you with the question I always ask: Is it really tanzanite if its not blue/violet?

Bobsiv: You know, I don't like checker tops, but I LOVE that stone. That is breathtaking!

Thanks Bobsiv - it certainly brings out the colours

LD - Love the both the top greens - super colours, very "gentle" greens to me. I don't know why that word comes to mind but it does. I've only ever seen pictures of the raw tanzanite which looks like your bottom two photos. The pink/sherry one in the middle looks almost as though it could double as a malaya. In any case, all very rare I should imagine, I'm guessing you haven't set any? TFS these beauties.

ETA: Minous...tanzanite is always heated to get the blue colour - it's usual natural colour is something akin to the yellow gems in LD's photos. Thus making her others very rare.

Starzin - Minous is teasing and she's correct. The above should really be called Zoisite. Tanzanite typically refers to the blue variety which can be heated or unheated - some comes out of the ground unheated blue. Interestingly, the selling price of unheated doesn't command a higher price but there some people who believe unheated Tanzanite performs better. I'm not convinced because I think it varies from gem to gem, cut to cut.

Tanzanite/Zoisite (to keep Minous happy ) can be pink, orange, yellow, green and lilac or bi-coloured as you can see in Barrett's photo above. Tanzanite is the marketing name and most people think of blue/violet when they hear that term but technically it's all Zoisite!

To answer your question, I haven't set any of these. Not sure why! The top green is a stunning gem in real life so I may think about doing something with it.

Starzin - Minous is teasing and she's correct. The above should really be called Zoisite. Tanzanite typically refers to the blue variety which can be heated or unheated - some comes out of the ground unheated blue. Interestingly, the selling price of unheated doesn't command a higher price but there some people who believe unheated Tanzanite performs better. I'm not convinced because I think it varies from gem to gem, cut to cut.

Duh! There you go then. I do wish they wouldn't keep changing the name on me - it's so hard to keep up! Yes I do think tanzanite=heated to blue/purple. I've much still to learn

I do think that top green deserves to be set - I think it's a rare green in any gem and would no doubt be stunning set. Are you sure you don't have any settings laying around that it might fit?

Written by Starzin » April 26th, 2012, 6:19 pm:

Starzin - Minous is teasing and she's correct. The above should really be called Zoisite. Tanzanite typically refers to the blue variety which can be heated or unheated - some comes out of the ground unheated blue. Interestingly, the selling price of unheated doesn't command a higher price but there some people who believe unheated Tanzanite performs better. I'm not convinced because I think it varies from gem to gem, cut to cut.

Duh! There you go then. I do wish they wouldn't keep changing the name on me - it's so hard to keep up! Yes I do think tanzanite=heated to blue/purple. I've much still to learn

I do think that top green deserves to be set - I think it's a rare green in any gem and would no doubt be stunning set. Are you sure you don't have any settings laying around that it might fit?

Unfortunately no. Tons of stones but distinct lack of settings!

Unfortunately no. Tons of stones but distinct lack of settings!

Ah...and therein lies the rub I vote for moving it up the list of setting priorities

My necklace of lavender unheated tanzanite rondelles that I got from Dana at MastercutGems. Strung it up myself using sterling fittings. This was one of my first jewelry making projects, so don't look too closely. I currently wear this with a pearl pendant.

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Unheated Tanzanite Necklace

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Wow Fly Girl! Those are nicely cut rondelles and such a pretty soft colour. It looks like a pretty good job to me (not that I'm any expert, just a beginner in fact).

Written by Starzin » April 27th, 2012, 6:23 pm:Wow Fly Girl! Those are nicely cut rondelles and such a pretty soft colour. It looks like a pretty good job to me (not that I'm any expert, just a beginner in fact).

Thank you, Starzin. They are quite pretty in real life. I am hunting for more rondelle necklaces, since the light flashes add visual interest and can kick up a simple pendant a notch.

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Tanzanite Rondelle Necklace with Green Pearl Pendant

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Very nice, FlyGirl

Thanks for adding the pic with the pearl, If that's a pearl with "peacock" colours - sorry not up with pearls - I imagine the tanzanite sets it off very well.

If you try online, I'm finding well cut rondelles very hard to source I read recently that India has good material and poor cutting and China has good cutting and poor material - seems to be borne out by what I've seen. I bought a black spinel strand before I read that and I think a third of the strand will be unusable. Or at least have to be sorted into lesser projects than what I had originally planned

ETA: Oops! Just read under the pic that it's a green pearl.