Description of JEWELRY By Birth Date

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Birthday Stones: Blue topaz

Blue topaz is the birthstone for December - and is also the recommended gemstone for couples celebrating their fourth wedding anniversary. Blue topaz has a definite, uniform color ranging from sky blue to Swiss blue. Blue Topaz is sometimes confused with the more costly aquamarine - yet whereas aquamarine sometimes has a greenish-blue or bluish-green tint, blue topaz will always look blue or bluish gray.

Blue topaz has become one of the most popular gemstones on the market today, due to its clarity, durability, availability and affordable cost. Yet it is a shade of topaz rarely found in nature. The stone's watery blue color is most often created through a combination of heat treatment and irradiation. Blue topaz does occur naturally, but almost all commercially available blue topaz is produced from less attractive colors which are irradiated and heat treated to turn them blue. This treatment produces a stable color, and normally the stones are not radioactive when they are released on the market, although there have been cases where stones with an unsafe level of radiation have been sold. There are distinct hues of blue topaz, which we presume arise because of the different treatments. The most usual colors are known as "London Blue", "Swiss Blue" and "Sky Blue"