The pink color of rose quartz is attributed to microscopic inclusions of a pink variety of the mineral dumortierite. These inclusions are usually abundant enough to make the rose quartz translucent instead of transparent. Rose Quartz is fairly common and found in many places throughout the world, and can occur in very large examples in nature. This allows exceedingly large gemstones to be cut from it.

Like amethyst, Citrine is a quartz variant found in geodes and gets its color from iron impurities. With shades ranging from the perfect summer orange to a strong amber honey, most of the world’s citrine is found in Brazil. Queen Victoria had a particular fondness for the stone, and had it used as decoration in her summer residence in the mid 19th century.