Look ahead: October's birthstone will be Tourmaline

Where we check into possible birthstone plans for the upcoming month…

A great design you can make with tourmaline beads…

Tourmaline beads, the birthstone of choice for October, show some appropriately magical properties. Did you know that if you rub this stone, it generates a charge that attracts small objects like bits of paper or strands of hair? (I couldn’t find an image of this. Bummer. Please submit one if you’ve got one.)

True to its name (which originally meant “stone of mixed colors”), tourmaline is found in a very pretty palette of blue, yellow, pink, red, black, green and clear stones. Here are most of those colors in a strand that we sell:

Rings & Things also sells strands of the nice black tourmaline alone:

Here’s a great idea for using black tourmaline in a rosary:

David’s Rosary uses the black tourmaline beads

And don’t forget tourmalated quartz. These beads technically include tourmaline, so they add to your options for “October babies”:

You’ll find lots more neat background reading at our Gemstone Index ‘tourmaline’ entry! And this is the time of year when you can come to our BeadTour bead shows to look for great new tourmaline, tourmalated quartz and many more gemstone beads not found in our catalog!