Grow Gemstones at Home, A DIY Roundup

  Did you know you can grow gemstones at home? Realizing that many of you may be home with your kiddos, I offer you this DIY gemstone roundup. Here are three great tutorials that teach you how to grow gemstones at home.  

Grow Gemstones with Hot Water

ThoughtCo offers this great tutorial teaching you to grow faux rubies, amethyst, emeralds, and diamonds. Find the ingredients you need ahead of time online. In order to facilitate your acquisition, I found the exact chemical names for the active ingredients in the recipes offered by ThoughtCo. Before you start, you'll need to order the following supplies: potassium alum powder, chromium potassium sulfate powder (chrome alum), monoammonium phosphate powder. For some of the recipes, you will also need food coloring.

Grow Your Own Geodes

Terrie Burton at Dollar Store Crafts offers this fun tutorial for growing your own geodes. For less than $4, she promises hours of fun watching your geodes grow. All you need is a box of powdered borax, colored metallic pipe cleaners (or food coloring and regular pipe cleaners), and fishing line or curling ribbon.

DIY Faux Agate Slab

This fun tutorial from Fall For DIY is my favorite of all of them. In fact, I'm ordering the supplies while I write! While this one requires a little more time and effort than the others, the results will wow your friends (when you can next visit them, that is). Supplies you need: polymer clay, glitter glass, glue, and aluminum baking pans or parchment paper. In addition to ordering the supplies for the faux agate slabs tutorial, I also ordered the supplies to make my own geodes. I can't wait to get started. I know my daughter is going to love working on these projects with me. Yours will, too. Which tutorial are you going to try? ~Angela Magnotti Andrews