While Quartz is one of the most abundant minerals on the Earth's surface, it makes it no less valuable, or beautiful! It is composed of the elements silicon and oxygen, and in its pure state it is colorless, though just small amounts of various impurity atoms can yield a variety of colors. It is common to find inclusions in quartz crystals. Quartz is usually one of the last minerals to form in a deposit, so it sometimes grows around existing crystals. Because quartz is commonly clear, the inclusions are easy to see, as seen in smokey and rutilated quartz.

Tourmaline presents itself in a rainbow of colors, making it one of the most colorful, and most popular, gemstones. Tourmaline crystals form by hydrothermal activity in igneous and metamorphic rocks. The crystals form when hot water and vapors carry the necessary elements to form tourmaline in the empty spaces of rock- pockets, voids, and fractures. Brazil has been the world’s leading source of Tourmaline for nearly 500 years. Portuguese in the 1500s thought the colorful stones they obtained from indigenous people and streams were emeralds and sapphires- Tourmaline was not recognized as a distinct mineral until 1793.