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Pink Diamond

July 19, 2010 By
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Pink Diamond

Pink Diamond

Who said the (copiously) rich and (mega) famous have it all? We all know that money cannot buy everything; it can’t buy love, can’t buy true friends, can’t buy happiness, and so forth. However, if you are Mariah Carey, the world’s biggest selling female artist in history, it can help you attain any creature comfort you can imagine, like super-luxurious pink diamond! Mariah Carey, one of Hollywood’s ten richest women, has been seen sporting stunning pink diamond and sapphire ring pop and a gorgeous 17-carat pink diamond engagement ring.

Mariah Carey, 40, and husband Nick Cannon, 29, tied the knot two years ago, and for their second anniversary they resolved to renew their vows: “If you were married to Mariah Carey, you’d want to marry her every year too,” a euphoric Nick tells USMagazine.com. Carey is known for her love of girlish things, like butterflies, rainbows, and anything pink. For their second anniversary, then, Cannon decided it would be a good idea to purchase the missus the gorgeous pink diamond and sapphire ring pop.

But the luxurious pink diamond and sapphire ring pop is dwarfed compared to Mariah’s epicurean 17-carat pink diamond engagement ring. Mariah, whose net worth is estimated at well over $200 million, knows how to “live it large;” private jets, boats, houses in NY and LA and much more are all part of her routine. Her pink diamond engagement ring is but a mere addition to this routine. The ring’s value is said to be $2.5 million, and Mariah said the pink diamond is “so clear, you can see [her] finger right through it.” The ring  has an emerald-cut fancy light pink centre stone surrounded by 58 intense pink diamonds, flanked by two half-moon diamonds, with the centre stone alone being 10 carats and just a little smaller than a dime.

Diamonds come in a variety of colors- gray, white, blue, yellow, orange, red, green, brown, black, purple and pink. Pink diamonds are one of the rarest and most valuable diamonds, and natural pink diamonds (as opposed to enhanced), are so rare that many jewelers have never even seen one. It is no surprise that many other superstars, fancy it so much. Indeed, Mariah has taken “pretty in pink” to a new, mostly unattainable, level.

Filed Under: Colored Diamonds

Blue Diamond

July 19, 2010 By
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Blue Diamond

Blue Diamond

In their purest form, diamonds are colorless. Colorless means that the stone itself does not absorb any light, but reflects all of it back to the observer, causing him to see white light, or what the human eye interprets as colorless. Blue diamonds are actually diamonds that absorb all wavelengths of light except for blue. What makes a blue diamond absorb light are impurities in its molecular structure. In the specific case of a blue diamond, that impurity is an element known as boron.

Whereas carbon, the main element of diamond, has a quadruple bond capacity, boron can only make three bonds. Therefore, when a boron atom is stuck in the middle of a lattice of carbon atoms in a blue diamond, one carbon bond is left loose, giving light a little bit of an obstacle course bouncing around a floating orbital and out of the stone. The angles the light bounces, thanks to the structure of the carbon-boron bond, make it that the only light able to be reflected off the stone is blue, creating a blue diamond. The more boron impurities in a diamond lattice, the more intensely colored the blue diamondis.

Only .01 percent of all natural diamonds mined on Earth are colored. This makes sense, in light of the fact that boron is only present in .0001 percent of the earth’s crust. This gives a hundredfold disparity between colored diamonds in general andblue diamonds in particular. This is because there are many other impurities that can yield other colors in diamonds. Blue diamonds have to be in the exact right place at the exact right time to form with enough boron in their lattice to form the blue color that makes them so valuable. All it takes is 1 boron per every million carbon atoms to do the trick.

The most famous of the blue diamonds above the earth’s crust today is the Hope Diamond. Just as with any stone that has traversed history, nobody knows where the blue diamond came from, but people speculate India. This blue diamond was passed around for centuries, ended up with Louis XIV, the Sun King who reigned for over 70 years in pre-revolution France, and was then stolen from the French royal treasury, recut, and the blue diamond somehow ended up in Washington D.C.

As for the element responsible for the blue in blue diamonds, boron continues to get the short end of the deal. But, as the cartoon Futurama often used to advertise in its heyday, “Nobody Doesn’t Like Molten Boron!”

Filed Under: Colored Diamonds

Colored Diamonds

July 19, 2010 By
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Coloured Diamonds

Colored Diamonds

When it’s time to buy colored diamond, be it an engagement ring, earrings, bracelet, necklace or even men’s jewelry, much thought and effort are put into the endeavor. The reason is that diamonds are an expensive matter and one must take different factors into account, aside from the initial challenging budgetary decision: the color, cut, clarity and carat weight, also known as the 4 c’s, are all things that affect the price of the diamond. For many, the color of the diamond plays the most important role in their search, often because they are uninterested in standard colorless diamond, but, rather, in colored diamond.

Fancy colored diamonds come in a variety of colors, including steel gray, black, yellow, blue, pink, red, purple, green and all intermediate shades. Natural colored diamonds get their colors in different ways. For example, green diamonds become green as a result of radiation during the diamond’s creation, while yellow diamonds are produced as a result of trace nitrogen. However, not all colored diamonds are natural, and some result from different color manipulations.

Oftentimes, gemologists take undesirable diamonds and alter their color. In this way, for example irradiation is used followed by a high-heat treatment in order to turn sallow diamonds into much more vivid and rich colored diamonds.

It comes as no surprise that many celebrities choose colored diamonds over standard ones. For one, colored diamonds are, in many people’s opinion, more beautiful and regal (of course many would disagree with this statement). Additionally,Natural colored diamonds are much more rare than colorless, and Hollywood represents the trendy, expensive and inaccessible. And colored diamonds are all of the above.

Because natural colored diamonds are so rare and can be rather exorbitant, diamond treatments (namely, color manipulations) are very common. If you are no diamond-expert, and colored diamond has always been your dream, do not be disappointed if you quickly realize that you budget would not allow you to go for natural colored diamond. However, don’t be dissuaded; although artificial, these color manipulations still make truly beautiful colored diamonds more accessible and  possible for more of us to own. Whenever you shop around for colored diamond, always assume that any affordable fancy color diamond you may eye has been treated in some way to enhance its color and other characteristics. If you do wish to procure a natural colored diamond, you should ask for a lab certificate to verify the authenticity of any color diamond marketed as natural.

Filed Under: Colored Diamonds

Buy Diamonds – How and What to Look Out For

July 19, 2010 By
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Whenever you go about purchasing something of great value- a car, a house, etc., you want to make sure that you shop around wisely, in order to avoid any mishaps and spending unnecessarily large amounts of money. The process of buying a diamond is no different. Whether you are looking to buy a small diamond to add to your ring or a large diamond ring, there is a lot to know before actually buying the diamond.

The first basic thing you need to know is the four major factors according to which diamonds are priced. These are cut, color, clarity and carat, also known as the 4 C’s. Cut is probably the most important, and most challenging, of the four Cs to understand. The brilliance of a diamond depends heavily on its cut. If you want to buy a brilliant diamond you should learn about the different way diamonds are cut. Most diamonds contain some inclusions that occur during the formation process. The visibility, number and size of these inclusions determine what is called the clarity. Diamonds that are clear, naturally, are more expensive. The color of the diamond is important since colorless diamonds allow for the most refraction of light. Finally, carat is the unit of weight by which a diamond is measured. Buying diamonds can be an overwhelming task, so make sure you familiarize yourself with the 4 C’s.

When you buy a diamond, it is extremely important to ask for a certificate. Certificates tell you the diamond’s exact measurements and weight, as well as the details of its cut and quality. Buying diamond without a certificate is foolish since the certificate proves the diamond’s identity and value.

Scams are very common and are found in many major jewelry chain stores to a certain extent. Such scams exist simply because it is hard for innocent consumers to educate themselves before they buy diamonds. For instance, some major stores raise the prices of their diamonds, sometimes by hundreds of dollars, and then mark then 50% off- which still means you would pay more that you would at a different, more honest place. So, if you’re looking to buy diamonds make sure the store is known to be trust worthy. Another known scam is something called “Bait and Switch,” which, though outlawed, still persists. Stores advertise diamonds, but when you arrive to buy them, the diamond has been sold and they try to get you to buy a different diamond.

Filed Under: Buy Diamonds

Engagement Ring

July 19, 2010 By
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Engagement Ring

Engagement Ring

When I proposed to my wife, I didn’t really propose. I actually told her she had no choice and she had to marry me because I said so. (You can only do that power play if you’ve been in control of the relationship and you’re confident of the resulting answer. Otherwise, don’t even ask. I know from experience.) That’s when I gave her a diamond engagement ring.

Months before, I’d been asking myself why people even bother to purchase diamond engagement rings. I mean, assuming you have some sort of ancestry and keep your lineage on record, you can easily have them passed down from generation to generation. Does anyone really want to be buried in their rings? Maybe, but that’s icky. Nobody throws a diamond engagement ring away, and very few lose diamond engagement rings because they never take them off unless they’re asking for trouble.

But then I thought about the math. Let’s say each couple has three children. That means only 33% of diamond engagement rings, maximum, can be passed down, whereas in practice it’s probably less than that, people being buried in them and losing them and what not. So let’s make a liberal estimate of 25%. The means diamond engagement rings have to be continually manufactured in order to satisfy demand. And there’s always the mess of divorce and remarriage that just messes with the statistics.

That being said, I was exceedingly lucky not to have to purchase a diamond engagement ring. My late grandmother’s was more than handy even though I am the youngest of three children, and last to be married. When my brother was married, my grandmother was still living, though my grandfather had gotten her a bigger and better diamond engagement ring when he became successful. (Though by that time they were already married. This is confusing.) Meaning, my grandmother’s “spare”diamond engagement ring was still available, but for some reason he didn’t want it. My sister, being a female, wasn’t about to give her husband-to-be a diamond engagement ring with which to propose to her, so I got the heirloom. It’s nothing too swanky, just a simple ring with a few shiny diamonds in it, but luckily my wife doesn’t know or care about jewelry so much, one of the reasons why I married her. She just wants people to know she’s taken, which I’m not against, and a diamond engagement ring along with a wedding ring does the trick well enough.

So much for DeBeers’ marketing ploy that a man should spend 2-3 months wages for diamond engagement rings. I’ll spend it on a house, thank you very much.

Filed Under: Diamond Articles

Diamond Settings

July 19, 2010 By
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Diamond Settings

Diamond Settings

When buying diamond rings, many people often neglect to think about the diamond settings. Diamond buyers often investigate the different types of diamonds, the 4 C’s, reliable places from which to buy diamonds. While this is great and surely recommended for everyone, you should remember that the diamond settings are also very important and can even serve multiple functions. Pavé settings are made up of lots of tiny gems, often diamonds but not always, set close together. These little diamonds are separated and held in place by little beads of the setting metal. The result is a diamond setting that looks like a continuous surface of diamonds or other gems. This, in turn, causes the diamond to actually appear bigger than it is! Since it is the pave diamond setting make is difficult to distinguish each stone, it looks as if there are more diamonds. Of course, take into consideration the fact that pave diamond settings sometimes make the ring altogether a more expensive affair. Another way to make your ring appear bigger is by choosing a Bezel Set Diamond, which has a metal rim or collar encircling the sides of the diamond. White gold setting will blend in with the diamond and make it appear bigger than it is. Diamonds are often heirlooms, and the great thing about diamond settings is that, while diamonds cannot be replaces, their settings sure can. So, people who inherit diamonds with damaged or undesirable settings often choose to reset their jewels. A different setting can make the ring look like a whole new ring altogether! For instance, if the diamond you currently have has a tall and pointed setting, you can remove it and place it on a different diamond setting, with which your ring won’t bump into everything. The prong setting, also known as claw setting, is the most commonly used one. It is especially popular as a diamond engagement ring setting. Some of the advantages to take into account before buying a prong setting are: due to the prong’s small size, the diamond will appear bigger; prong settings are usually less expensive; prong diamond settings make is easier to clean the gem. A disadvantage a prong setting has is that the girdle areas is not covered, so the prong setting offers less protection.

Filed Under: Diamond Articles
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