THE CANARY SINGS IN YELLOW DIAMOND RINGS

If you've been watching trends in diamond rings lately, especially amongst celebrities, you might have noticed that colored diamonds are the latest craze. Celebrities are sporting red, blue and especially yellow diamonds, everything from the soft canary yellows to deep, saturated yellows, and in our VINTAGE JEWELRY SHOWCASE at RUBY LANE, yellow diamond rings are indeed, our hottest selling item. But here's the thing: unheated, untreated, natural colored diamonds of great clarity and color are hard to come by and cost a fortune. That's why wearing such rings is pretty much only for the rich and famous. The rest of us make do with treated or "enhanced" colored stones as these are more affordable. Sadly, they are also likely to be less permanent, more prone to chipping etc. So when we're shopping for colored diamonds rings for our shops at RUBY LANE and the new shop at RUBY PLAZA, we spend hours searching for affordable "natural" yellow diamond rings because we want our customers to have only the best they can afford.

Take that fabulous cocktail/dinner ring shown at the top of this blog. It has 2.14cts of NATURAL (not enhanced) diamonds ranging in clarity from VS - Si1 and with E - G color. This applies to both the clear and yellow diamonds. The radiance and sparkle in this ring is incredible. It's 18k yellow gold and weighs over 13 grams. We had it appraised just this month and the appraisal came in over $8500 CAD. You can see more photos and learn more about it only at VIANVI: VINTAGE and CONTEMPORARY COLLECTIBLE JEWELRY at RUBY PLAZA, our new shop where we can now sell newer and even brand new items that we weren't able to sell in our VINTAGE JEWELRY SHOWCASE at RUBY LANE.  This ring is for the lady with larger fingers (like me) but if you want a yellow diamond ring for a smaller finger, then how's this one shown below:

This ring, available in both of our RUBY LANE and RUBY PLAZA shops, features a 0.57ct cushion-cut natural fancy yellow diamond surrounded by another 0.86cts of brilliant Si1 - i1 clear diamonds. Appraised at around the same price as the other ring above, this is the chance for a woman who wears a small ring size (4 3/4 - 5) to snap herself up a yellow diamond ring. Again, please consult the actual listing (click on LINKS above) for more photos and full details.

Below are some more photos of jewelry with canary yellow diamonds that we've already sold from VINTAGE JEWELRY SHOWCASE at RUBY LANE:

Aren't these gorgeous? And one thing is certain: we can't keep them in stock. Almost as soon as we list a new canary or fancy yellow diamond ring in our shops, they're gone! Of course, the reason for that is simple: we carry only the best quality we can find in natural, untreated diamonds and offer them to our customers at reasonable prices. We're not saying everyone can afford them but those who can know they'll pay less with us than they will with other vendors who are looking to really cash in on this latest trend: colored diamonds! And it won't be over in a hurry because right now, canary yellow diamonds sing!

While we have you, you might want to slip over to OUR NEW SHOP at RUBY PLAZA now. While you'll find a lot of the same items we carry in our SHOP AT RUBY LANE, you'll find others you'll never see there. On top of that, we're kicking off our new shop with a GRAND OPENING SALE that starts on Saturday, May 15th. We haven't decided when it will end but as usual, it's first in, best dressed. So if you've had your eye on something in our RUBY LANE SHOP for a while, you might want to GO! to our RUBY PLAZA SHOP this weekend. It just might be on sale there in our GRAND OPENING SALE. See you there! Look for items marked GO!

COLORED DIAMONDS ARE HOT BUT IRRADIATED OR ENHANCED ARE NOT!

See this ring at http://www.rubylane.com/shops/vivijewels/item/FancyYellowPLAT

Have you caught onto the latest craze in diamond rings ie. colored diamonds? While clear, beautiful diamonds will always be a girl's best friend, amongst those who can afford them e.g Hilary Clinton and Hollywood stars, colored diamonds are hot, hot, hot! Here's some interesting information on that from the NATURAL DIAMOND ASSOCIATION site:

"Former First Lady, Hillary Clinton, wore her 4.23 carat "Kahn Canary" flawless diamond to President Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Ball and other important events. The Academy Awards, where fashion can make or break the image of movie stars, actress Whoopi Goldberg wore a $5 million canary yellow diamond pendant that weighed 80 carats, and actress Julianne Moore wore a 7.52 carat fancy vivid yellow diamond. In the fashion industry, supermodel Christy Turlington set her cushion-shaped yellow diamond in a navel ring. Designer Donatella Versace has also been spotted showing off her yellow diamonds. In the hit series, "Sex and the City," the chic Samantha Jones character receives a yellow diamond stunner from her boyfriend, Richard, after his indiscretion."


Imagine being able to afford rocks that size, even in ordinary clear diamonds!


Yes, those in the money are sporting red, green, blue, yellow and brown diamonds but if you're just catching onto this current hunger for coloured diamonds, you might want to be wary as you shop around. You see, while coloured diamonds are hot, irradiated or enhanced diamonds are not as hot, though they can be just as beautiful and just as expensive. 


So what's wrong with diamonds that have been enhanced or irradiated? Well nothing really except they're just nowhere near as valuable as a natural, unenhanced, untreated diamond ... regardless of the color! According to Wikipedia:


"Diamonds which are chosen for treatment are usually those that would be otherwise difficult to sell as gem diamonds, where inclusions or fractures noticeably detract from the beauty of the diamond to even casual observers. In these cases, the loss in value due to treating the diamond is more than offset by the value added by the mitigating of obvious flaws."


You see, the bottom line is finding unflawed diamonds of superb clarity and colour is like looking for a needle in a haystack. They are RARE! Again, according to the NATURAL DIAMOND ASSOCIATION:


"Natural Color Diamonds are found in nature in every shade imaginable - each and every stone one of a kind. The physical conditions required to form these miracles of nature occur so rarely that only one diamond in 10,000 possesses this natural color."


That brings me to the gorgeous, natural canary diamond ring now available in OUR SHOP AT RUBY LANE and shown in the photos in this post. This is the kind of coloured diamond ring you should be looking for. Custom-made and set in platinum and 18k, this cushion-cut natural canary diamond is 1.02cts of VS1 clarity, with no hint of brown or champagne, or heaven forbid, that super yellow, almost bile-coloured shade that you find in treated diamonds. That superb diamond is flanked by .30 cts of natural clear diamonds also of VS2 clarity and H-I colour. Then running down the sides of the band are another 56 smaller diamonds, bringing the total carat weight of this magnificent ring to 1.67cts. You can read the full details in the appraisal posted on the site. Incidentally, the ring appraised over $15,000 in February 2010. 

See this ring at http://www.rubylane.com/shops/vivijewels/item/FancyYellowPLAT

At the price we're offering it for, little wonder that it was added to 10 wish lists within the first 24 hours of putting it up in our shop. Who will be the smart one to snap this beauty up at an incomparable price. Just search "canary diamond ring" in Google products in Shopping and see what you'll find: lots of yellow diamond rings at monster prices ... and very few of them that are natural, unenhanced diamonds. Most have been treated in some way i.e. irradiated to get rid of inclusions or enhanced to bring up a better colour in what was probably not the nicest diamond to start with. Remember "only one diamond in 10,000 possesses this natural color."


Before I wrap this up, to add some more weight to why treatment matters, here's something else I found in Wikipedia:


"Treated diamonds usually trade at a significant discount to untreated diamonds. This is due to several factors, including relative scarcity — a much larger number of stones can be treated to reach gem quality than are found naturally occurring in a gem quality state — and the potential impermanence of various treatments."


So if you find a yellow diamond ring elsewhere, ask the vendor if the stone is natural or has been treated in any way. If they don't know, beware. If the stone looks super yellow, it's most likely treated. If the price is low, suspect treatment, or even lab-created. If those things don't matter to you, then no problem. But if you want the real thing, buy a ring like ours from a reputable seller who can put facts and an appraisal behind the asking price. 


See this fabulous ring and learn more about it HERE.