For one, you can buy gem powder directly, and it's incredibly cheap, and you'll notice I mentioned a method for using contiguous gems later in the thread

Eh, it'sdirectly related to the main post. Also I have been thinking in a crafts headspace for a few days while working on my most recent post.

I mean, it was going to be expensive anyway. It's also not hard to find just gem powder now that I'm thinking about it, because people want big, contiguous gems. So finding a whole or many to make up or encrust a full wedding band? Incredibly expensive. Loading gem powder instead of a dye into resin? Not cheap, but moreso, and less of an artistic statement imho. If you want plain colored crushed crystal, glass/cubic zirconium is an ideal stand in. Like, you can make that idea for relatively cheap, set it in a band of a nice gold/silver, and it would look just as good, because you obviously lose some of the qualities that makes gems desireable in the first place, if the fact they're your birthstones don't really matter. But if you have multiple whole gems to really fill out the band, and the money to really splash out in the jeweler, it could be gorgeous.

So basically, as always, it comes down to what exactly you want, your budget, and how much appearance matters next to what the materials actually are.

Oh sweet Jesus that's some good sourcing.

Hey,while it isn't quite like mixing dyes and creating a gradient, you could grind the gemstones in question and create a resin suspension for a similar effect, assuming none of them react in any way with standard 2 part epoxy. You could grind them fine, mix them into their respective resins, mix them, and let it cure.

Or, if you're more concerned about carrying over the crystal structure of the original stones than getting a strictly smooth gradient, you could polish them to a uniform shape and bond them somehow. Suspending in epoxy is still an option for that.

Just some ideas, idk if that works on all fronts.

WOO! Just think, when you pass it down and it breaks on your kid, you might even have to smack it one day lol