Blue Opal

Soft water-light, gentle as breath.

Blue opal is a pale, milky-blue variety of opal best known from the Andean deposits of Peru and from sources in the United States. Unlike precious opal, it shows no rainbow play of color; instead its beauty lives in soft translucent blue, formed naturally over geological time. The stone is relatively soft at 5.5 to 6.5 on the Mohs scale and can be fragile. Worth knowing: much of what's sold as "blue opal" at low prices is actually opalite, a manufactured glass, not a natural stone.