This is a ring that a friend of mine actually gave me the idea for but I loved it so much that I decided to make it!

The main stone is a fire opal cabochon that has great color. On the side view picture you can see some of the play of color inside the stone and in person it is even more spectacular. The little stones are genuine diamonds and weigh 0.15 carats total. The white metal is palladium and the yellow metal is 14 Karat yellow gold.

The idea is for the diamonds in their metal arms to look like they are radiating from the center stone like the sun or a star. Let me know what you think!

This piece is available for purchase! Please contact me at leah@leahashley.com if you are interested!

My second passion, behind design of course, is colored gemstones and I had so much fun last week taking pictures of some of my stones and writing about them that I thought I’d do it again (and today won’t be the last!)

I have 6 fire opals in my collection that are currently unmounted (I have 2 more that are in jewelry). I love bright colors so it’s natural that I would be drawn to bright orange colored gemstones. The fire opals I’ve seen have been in the yellow to red range and usually fall into the orange category. Some have flecks of color in them like you would expect from regular white opals and some don’t, called play of color. Some are very clear and some a milky. I’m sure there are specific things you should look for to find a “good” fire opal but I just look for pretty ones. I don’t care if they have play of color if the body color is super fun all by itself. I don’t care if the stone is a little milky if it is a fun color. And I don’t care if it’s a yellower color as opposed to red if it has that certain “personality” that speaks to me.

These are pictures of what would be considered sort of standard fire opals.

The oval stone on the top is a cabochon which means that it is domed with a flat surface rather than facets like a diamond. This type of cut, especially in a fire opal, can give a stone a nice depth of color because there is so much body to the stone and in this case allows for some light refraction within the stone creating a little bit of play of color. The stone in the center is a pear shaped stone that is a pretty milky orange color. I like it because it’s orange, no other reason. The picture on the bottom is of a very nice round cut fire opal that is very clear and very bright. The round stone was actual cut by a prestigious German cutter so the faceting is amazing and really makes the stone sparkle even though it isn’t a diamond and doesn’t have very much if any play of color.

This next pictures are of my collection of Fire opals that are still in matrix. Matrix is what jewelry people call the rock the gems grew in. The rock itself is not really a gemstone but having it still attached to the finer material can have a real neat effect.

You can see how different the colors in these particular stones are–yellow to very orange. I chose these stones because of their play of color, not their body colors. I think that having the stones still in matrix allows the light to refract differently and maybe a little more before it leaves the stone, really bringing out the other colors in the opals.

I think fire opals are a really neat stone with a lot of different options for color, cut, personality, etc. Opal is the official birthstone for October but you don’t have to have been born in October to enjoy them!

All of the stones above are for sale; contact me at leah@leahashley.com if you are interested!