It started with a handful of spikes.

I had found a strand of AAAA rainbow moonstone marquise briolettes, pointed little beads that catch the light and throw it back as color, and I could not stop looking at them. They had a glow that seemed to rise from somewhere deep inside the stone. I knew they had to be the center of something. I just had to figure out what.

The light inside a moonstone

That glow has a name: adularescence. It is the soft, floating sheen that seems to drift just below a moonstone's surface as you tilt it.

Gemstone science: why rainbow moonstone flashes color

Moonstone is a feldspar, and its sheen comes from its structure. Inside the crystal are microscopic, alternating layers of two feldspar minerals, albite and orthoclase. When light enters, it scatters between those layers and floats back to your eye as that dreamy glow. Rainbow moonstone takes it a step further. It is actually a variety of labradorite, and its internal layers act like a prism, splitting light into a whole spectrum of blues, yellows, oranges, and purples. No two stones ever catch the light the same way.

A spike that found its match

The marquise briolettes were shaped like spikes, and that shape jogged a memory. I had a small cache of bullet-shaped moonstones left over from my Femme Fatale collection, and their pointed silhouette was a perfect echo of the new briolettes. Two stones from two different collections, made years apart, that looked like they had always belonged together.

I also had a new material I was eager to feature: Mixed Beryl crown-cut beads, faceted geometric little stones in aquamarine, morganite, and heliodor. I wanted a design that would truly showcase all of it, the spikes, the bullets, and the crown cuts, without crowding any of them.

Andrea Li

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Gemstone Profile:

Moonstone

The glow · Adularescence

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Identification & Type

Moonstone (orthoclase feldspar). A captivating variety of feldspar known for its ethereal, floating luster.

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Physical Properties

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Mohs hardness: 6 to 6.5

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Colors: translucent to opaque. Classic white with a blue sheen, plus rainbow, peach, and grey.

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Luster: pearly to vitreous.

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Chemical formula: (K,Na)AlSi₃O₈

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Key Phenomenon: Adularescence

Scattered light. The sheen comes from light diffracting through thin, alternating mineral layers inside the crystal, which scatters it back as that soft floating glow. Rainbow moonstone, a variety of labradorite, spreads it into a full spectrum.

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Major Origins

Sri Lanka (Ceylon) India Madagascar United States

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Symbolism & Metaphysical

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Intuition & Clarity

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New Beginnings

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Calm & Balance

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Feminine Energy & Fertility

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Care & Handling

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Gentle cleaning. Use warm, soapy water and a soft brush. Never an ultrasonic or steam cleaner.

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Avoid chemicals. Protect it from harsh agents, perfume, and cosmetics.

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Store separately. Keep it in a soft pouch so harder stones cannot scratch it.

The beauty of moonstone. Elegance in nature's glow.

Andrea Li

andreali.com

Designing for the float

The answer was restraint. I landed on a minimal choker, the kind of design that gives a gemstone cluster room to breathe.

The whole idea was to make the cluster look like it was floating around the neck, with as little structure showing as possible. A clean stage, with nothing competing with the stones. The less hardware the eye notices, the more the stones get to be the entire story.

Building the vine

I fabricated the choker base by hand from 14k gold-filled heavy gauge wire, shaping it to sit close around the neck. At the very tip, where the choker comes around to the front of the throat, I soldered a tiny pearl peg and set a single luminous baroque pearl, the soft punctuation mark the whole piece resolves toward.

Then I drilled a row of tiny holes up the length of the wire. Those holes are how I anchor a cluster securely to a base this minimal, with no bulky setting to hide behind. Working up from there, I built the gemstone cluster like a vine twirling up the side of the choker, the marquise moonstones and bullet moonstones and crown-cut beryls climbing toward the front. I filled the heart of the cluster with tiny sapphires, sparkling Herkimer diamonds, and keshi pearls, the small details that give a cluster depth when you look closely, and let the whole thing resolve right at the baroque pearl cap.

The empty side

Here is the decision that makes the piece work. I left the other side of the choker completely bare.

No flourish, no stones, just the clean gold line of the wire. That emptiness is what sells the illusion. With one side blooming and the other side quiet, the cluster reads as something that grew there on its own, floating at the throat rather than sitting on a necklace. It also gives the choker a modern, architectural feeling, asymmetry used on purpose, the way a single branch reads against an open sky.

Why this one is one of a kind

A rainbow moonstone never flashes the same way twice, and neither do the stones that sit beside it. The bullet moonstones came from a collection I will never make again. The cluster was wound by hand, stone by stone, up one side of a base I fabricated for this piece alone. It cannot be repeated, and that is exactly the point. It is one moment of light caught at the throat, and it belongs to one person.

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The Stone That Sat in My Drawer for Years: An Amethyst Stalactite Necklace

June 19, 2026Diya CollectionAndrea Li

Some years ago I walked out of one of my favorite gem shows with my budget already gone.

The show is held at a place those of us who go every year just call the Holidome. I was leaving a little reluctantly, the way you do when you are not ready for a show to be over. On my way out I passed a strand of stones unlike anything I had ever seen, and I stopped. I had to have them. I bought them on the spot with money I did not really have left to spend.

Then they sat in my drawer. Year after year, while a few of their siblings found their way into other pieces, this strand mostly waited for a design worthy of how strange and beautiful they were. This necklace is that design, finally.

What an amethyst stalactite slice actually is

The stone at the heart of this necklace is an amethyst stalactite slice, and it is one of the most unusual stones in all of fine jewelry. Instead of a single clear gem, you get a tiny sealed landscape: a concentric eye of banded agate at the center, ringed by a halo of pale purple amethyst crystal, often finished with a rim of sparkling raw druzy. People look at them and see different things. An eye. A flower. A small planet.

Andrea Li

Gemstone Profile: Amethyst Stalactite

A one-of-a-kind slice · the flower in the stone

The Formation

Formed over millennia in volcanic pockets and mineral-rich caves. A unique stalactitic crystal growth, drop by drop.

Anatomy

A distinct core, often agate, followed by concentric bands, then radiating layers of amethyst crystals.

Color & Luster

Ranges from ethereal lavender to deep violet, with natural color zoning. A bright, vitreous luster.

Rarity & Unicity

A rare and coveted formation. Cross-sections resemble a natural flower or starburst. A one-of-a-kind natural design.

Symbolism

Commonly associated with clarity, calm energy, and deep grounding. Considered a stone of time and growth.

Learn more at andreali.com

Andrea Li

Gemstone science: a geode, sliced

Amethyst stalactite slices come almost entirely from the ancient volcanic geodes of Uruguay and southern Brazil. Silica-rich water seeps into a pocket in cooling basalt and, drop by drop, builds a hanging stalactite the same way a cave stalactite grows. The center fills first with microcrystalline agate, the banded eye you see. Around it, larger amethyst crystals grow outward into the open space, building the purple halo. Slice the finished stalactite crosswise and that whole hidden history is revealed in rings. Amethyst is simply purple quartz, colored by traces of iron and natural irradiation, and it sits at a 7 on the Mohs hardness scale. Because the pattern forms entirely by chance, no two slices are ever the same.

Building a piece around the stone

I chose one slice from the strand and turned it on its side to run horizontally, like a small landscape, for a bar-style necklace.

I do not bezel a stone like this. I wired a small 24k gold vermeil structure by hand to cradle the slice and to give me something to build on. Then I grew a gemstone cluster up and out of that armature, the way crystals themselves grow, so the cluster seems to spill from the raw amethyst edge rather than sit politely beside it. I left that raw druzy rim exposed on purpose. It is the most delicate part of the stone, those tiny crystal tips, but hiding it would have hidden the entire reason to use the slice.

They belong in a pastel collection because the stone is already pastel: a washed lilac crystal wrapped around a smoky agate eye. I do not have to add drama to it. I build a cluster of coordinating soft stones around it, anchor it with a single flat green rutilated quartz teardrop, and let the slice lead.

One thing I have learned the hard way: widen the hole through the slice before you start. I thread my own wire through that channel several times to lock the vermeil structure in place, and it fills up faster than you expect. The first time, I left myself almost no room to pass the 12-gauge head pin that connects the chain, and I had to ease it through with patient, firm pressure and a little water to lubricate the channel. Now I make the room up front.

Close-up of a gold paperclip chain necklace with an amethyst stalactite slice pendant and clustered pastel gemstones.

The chain had to earn its place

A pendant with this much presence needed a chain that could hold its own. Anything delicate would have looked apologetic next to a stone like this. I had a large-link 14k gold-filled chain in my stock that balanced the weight of the slice perfectly, and I finished it with a large toggle clasp in the same confident scale. The chain is part of the statement, not an afterthought to it.

Why this one is truly one of a kind

The slice was unrepeatable before it ever reached my bench. The eye at its center, the rings around it, the depth of its purple, all of it was drawn once by the earth over millions of years and will never be drawn the same way again. When I build a cluster to match one, I am matching a composition that cannot recur.

That is the whole idea behind this collection, which continues the pastel work I began with Tamar. I buy the stones I fall for, and I keep designing until each one has found the single piece it was always meant for. This geode waited years for that piece. It was worth the wait.

Previous work with Amethyst Stalactite:

Statement necklace with green gemstone beads and a crystal slice pendant, arranged on a white background with soft shadow.

Close-up of a pastel gemstone statement necklace with amethyst slices, soft green stones, and gold accents on a white background.

Discover

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Two minutes. The quiz tells me how you want jewelry to feel in your life, and the messages that follow walk you through pieces I think you'll love.

Take the Style Quiz

Two minutes. I take it from there.

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How a Name Comes to a One-of-a-Kind Piece: The Fairy Dynamite Story

June 19, 2026Diya CollectionAndrea Li

I have named hundreds of pieces over the years. This one refused to let me.

So I did something I had never done before. I showed it to the people on my email list before it was fully finished, and I asked them to name it for me. That is a vulnerable thing to do. The name is usually mine to give, the last quiet decision I make at the bench. Handing it over meant trusting that the people who follow my work would see in the piece what I saw in it. They did, and then some.

This is the story of how that necklace came to be, and how it earned the name it carries now: Fairy Dynamite.

A piece that picked up where the last release left off

The investment I make in my art is more precious than paint and canvases. Gemstones are sold in strands. Creating a lush palette for a new collections requires multiple strands. I work hard to honor the full use of each tiny treasure that ends up on my studio desk. I call this using the ‘whole buffalo’, much like the Native Americans who honored the life sustaining yields as a result of their hunting practices. When I buy gemstones for a collection, I am not finished with that collection until I have found a home for nearly all of them. This necklace is proof of that habit. It picks up exactly where my last pastel release left off, and it began with two components I had already made and set aside.

The two clusters at its heart were originally built for an ear cuff. Each one stacked a large, simple-cut blue topaz with geometric Australian opal briolettes, piled one on the next like stones in a river cairn. They were beautiful, and they were wrong for that ear cuff. Their chunky weight clashed with the delicate frame I had designed, so I used tiny opal rondelles and cascading gold chains for that piece instead. The two heavy clusters went onto my desk, where they sat and waited until I could find a design that honored how substantial they were.

Building the necklace around them

The answer was to return to the thing I do most naturally: my signature asymmetrical gemstone clustering.

The chains came first, and they were the real spark. I had an organic-shaped pearl chain whose knobby, irregular rhythm matched the cairn-like stack of the Australian opals almost exactly. The moment I held them next to each other, the necklace existed in my head. I added two 24k gold vermeil components as the connection points that carry the main cluster out to a pair of those chains.

Then came the part that is never optional. Once a cluster is built, I go back in and strategically add stones so the whole thing flows without any visual stutter. I built up the joins between the original cluster and the new main cluster, and I threaded tiny Australian opals through the design as single points of cohesion, small echoes that tie one area to the next.

My plan had been to simply attach the two pearl chains and stop there. I have a very hard time doing anything standard. So I added gemstones along the chains to break their monotony, and then the chains read as too heavy. To put the air back in, I added a single gold circle link. That link is what I call a Marilyn: one unexpected element that breaks the pattern and makes you look twice. Every piece needs one.

Around that blue topaz and opal core, the finished cluster gathers aquamarine, amethyst, kunzite, mystic labradorite, and keshi pearls, the soft pastel family I keep coming back to.

A note on the stones

Moonstone is one of the soft, glowing stones running through this necklace, and it earns its place. Its dreamy sheen has a name, adularescence, and it comes from the way moonstone is built in microscopic layers of two feldspar minerals. Light enters, scatters between those layers, and floats back to your eye as that glow that seems to hover just below the surface. No two moonstones scatter light in quite the same way, which is exactly why they belong in a piece that exists only once.

Handing it to the community

When the necklace was nearly there, I sent it to my list and asked a simple question: what would you name her? I made it easy to answer. No external poll, no form, just hit reply.

I was not prepared for what came back. Names arrived full of imagination and personal meaning. Jenny Blanchard, who would end up naming the winner, wrote that the piece gave her "the sensation of being from another world where fairies are busy at work." Other subscribers reached for mythology, for wine, for gratitude, for the night sky. Every single name came with a little story about why.

So I sent a second email. I listed every name that had been submitted, each with a short description so no one felt left out, and I let the community vote.

Fairy Dynamite

They chose Fairy Dynamite, a name Jenny submitted.

It fit better than anything I would have landed on alone. From across a room the necklace looks delicate and a little innocent, all soft blues and lilacs and pearl. Up close it is anything but quiet. It explodes into color and texture and weight. Delicate and explosive at the same time. Fairy Dynamite.

The part that mattered most

After the vote, I did not simply move on to the next thing. I wrote fifteen personal thank-you notes, each one from my own inbox rather than an automated send, and each one spoke to that person's specific submission. Then I made something for every contributor: a custom Andrea Li Designs certificate naming them, the piece, its stones, and the exact name they had submitted or voted for. Sixteen people, sixteen certificates.

Certificate of participation naming Jenny Blanchard as contributor to the one-of-a-kind gemstone necklace “Fairy Dynamite.”

I did this because these were never entries in a contest to me. They were people who handed me their imagination, and I wanted them to hold something that said so. The replies that came back told me it landed.

A name, and a piece, that are truly one of a kind

Fairy Dynamite is one piece in the collection I am releasing this fall, the next chapter of the pastel work I began with Tamar. Like everything I make, it exists exactly once. The stones in it will never gather in the same way again, and the design will never be repeated.

There is something right about a one-of-a-kind piece being named by the people who will remember it. The reason the world treasures a singular jewel is the same reason I make what I make. It will only ever be itself. And now it carries a name to match, given to it by the community that watched it come together.