This is an incredible Tourmaline, not just for its size, but its color! As rough, this piece showed a side of peach and a side of orange that have blended well into the blushing apricot color you see here. A perfect reminder of warmer seasons.
 
I cut this Tourmaline in one of my favorite designs, "Omni Oval," written by Robert Strickland.
 
There are some minor inclusions visible in the magnified images that are difficult to see without magnification.
 
Tourmaline is a wonderful stone, and one of the most colorful, coming in a vast array of colors, and often sharing more than one color in a stone. Some are even dicrotic, meaning they are different colors depending which side you look through. Tourmaline is a 7-7.5 on the Mohs Hardness Scale, making it acceptable as a ring for everyday wear, but caution should be taken to preserve its beauty. It has the privilege of being marked as October's birthstone.