This is perhaps one of the most asked questions that I receive from consumers and jewelers, alike. Exactly what is a gemstone? How can a gemstone be different colors and still be the same gemstone? Like the blue and green sapphires shown above. And what makes one gemstone different from another?

To answer these questions requires some complex understanding of the chemical and physical structure of gem materials. But rather than attempt some long, boring explanations of gemstone structure, allow me to refer you to your kitchen cabinet and bathroom medicine chest....... Because that is where you will find the true answers to these question. Here is why.........

If you have some aluminum foil in your kitchen, mix that with some oxygen that you are breathing in your kitchen, put them together under intense heat and pressure until they bond together, and you will have a colorless or white sapphire. Now, borrow some titanium off the wing of an American Airlines jet, and combine that with some iron from the skillet hanging in your pot rack, and you will have a blue sapphire. Take the titanium out and leave just the iron and you have a green sapphire.

Sound weird? Its not. Gemstones are extraordinary formations of some very ordinary elements from our everyday life. In fact, I once offered a gemology class entitled Making Gemstones from Household Kitchen Products. In which I went to a local supermarket and purchased virtually every element required to make almost all common gemstones from various shelves within the store. Problem was, nobody came to the class. Everyone thought it was a joke. It wasn't!

Here are some examples of gemstones being created from household kitchen products......

Silicon Glue (silicon)

Opals, amethysts, citrines, smokey quartz are all created from nothing more than silicon and oxygen. Add some water and let the silicon form in small round nodules in nice even rows...you have an opal. But some iron into the silicon and oxygen...and have an amethyst. The list could go on and on for silicone.

TUMS Antacid (calcium carbonate)

Pearls are pure calcium carbonate. In fact, a few hundred years ago rich people like kings and queens would have pearls smashed into powder and put in wine for use as a relief for heartburn. A very old, and very expensive, form of TUMS. You will find the same calcium carbonate in a mineral known as aragonite, which is also the mineral that oysters excrete to make the pearls.

Lithium Grease

Kunzite. If you take some aluminum foil, add some silicon glue, and then a little lithium from your grease gun, you will have the primary ingredients for the variety of spodumene known as kunzite.

Chromium (from your vitamin supplement cabinet)

Ruby, emerald, alexandrite, tourmaline, and tsavorite. If you take your aluminum foil and oxygen that made your colorless sapphire, and put some of the chromium vitamin supplement from your bathroom cabinet, you will get a ruby. Put this same chromium supplement in a colorless beryl and you get the green of emerald. The list goes on and on for chromium.

These are just a few of the common elements that go into making gemstones. Simple everyday elements binding together to form what are sometimes complicated gemstones. And you can take almost any gemstone that you can name, and it will be a combination of the most basic elements, most of which you can find in and around your house. This is what gemstones are, why the same gemstone can have different colors, and why gemstones differ from each other.