Smooth little stabilized turquoise rice shape beads 5x4mm on 16-inch strands
These are a delightful alternative to round beads for earrings or delicate bracelets or necklaces
When you just want the turquoise look, you don't necessarily need real natural turquoise. With prices as high as they are now, we need alternatives.
They can include Howlite or Magnesite permanently dyed turquoise, and the stabilized turquoise you see here.
Low grade turquoise is usually light in color and so soft that it crumbles when cut for beads or other jewelry components.
Stabilization involves injecting the porous stone with resins, often with color added, and putting it under high pressure so the stone absorbs the resin.
This results in a stone that can easily be cut and shaped and which has more color too. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, it salvages an otherwise unusable scarce resource. The problem is when Stabilized is priced and sold as natural Turquoise so please don't mis-represent this material. Since it's part resin I'm listing it the resin section too.
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