How do you remember which is which..?

[Hemera]

I have been buying lots of new crystals this year and sometimes I´m starting to forget the names of some -especially ones I do not handle that often.

I could of course store them in separate small boxes with names written on top of each. But I don´t know..I just love to see them all at a glance in that one big box that I have for them. Now I´m thinking of stating a Crystal journal or some kind of album where I could have a page and a picture for each of my stones and crystals.

So, how do you keep track of your stones? Or maybe you are all so clever that just know them all by name at a glance?

 

[Tarot Orat]

I have been buying lots of new crystals this year and sometimes I´m starting to forget the names of some -especially ones I do not handle that often.

I could of course store them in separate small boxes with names written on top of each. But I don´t know..I just love to see them all at a glance in that one big box that I have for them. Now I´m thinking of stating a Crystal journal or some kind of album where I could have a page and a picture for each of my stones and crystals.

So, how do you keep track of your stones? Or maybe you are all so clever that just know them all by name at a glance?

As an amateur gemologist and mineralogist, I have some hard science reference books along with my metaphysical crystal books, and I find that learning about the scientific differences between stones helps keep them straight in my mind. Just knowing that one's igneous and another's metamorphic can help me see a stone and say "Okay, vertical striations with crystal inclusions, that doesn't occur in xxxx kind of stone, it must be yyyy." I don't keep them all in one big box but I have some smaller boxes IN a big box, all the quartzes are in one box, all the beryls in another, etc., so I may not be able to tell my prasiolite from my green chrysolite on sight but I know that the green one in the quartz box is prasiolite and the light-green one in the beryl box is chrysolite. I have mineralogists' tools like MOh's hardness sets and streak plates so if something gets REALLY confusingly out of place, I can check the hardness/streak color and sort it out - and for hardness tests I don't scratch the stone I don't remember, I use IT to scratch the hardness-set test stones that I don't have an emotional attachment to.

That may all be a little too much like a gem hobbyist talking than a crystal diviner, but I guess that since I'm a bit of both, it works for me

 

[PathWalker]

My crystals are stored in set of tall slim metal drawers, each drawer one colour. Then each crystal is in a little origami box like this

http://www.origami-instructions.com/images/box/thumbnails/15-origami-box.jpg

witht he name written on the box (cheap paper boxes, easily replaced.)

Once you have several hundred crystals, rough and worked, large and small, you can't just keep them all jumbled up any more

Some get a 'holiday' out on dispaly, and then swapped for others, often seasonally coloured.

Have fun

 

[tarotbear]

plastic organizers ...

PathWalker - I tried that link but all I kept getting was another and another and another link to more links!

My crystals are in a clear, hard plastic box found in crafts stores, with a piece of quilt batting in the bottom of each of the sections - not sure if they were supposed to be for buttons or jewelry findings - whatever - a box for storing fishing flies would work as well, since I mostly have small tumbled pieces and points. They are also labelled. That way I can put them all out in the light in their clear plastic container. It also made it easier to take them somewhere to do a crystal layout on people.

One container is labelled by chakras and what stone is best for what; the other is just the overflow.

The big specimens were placed on view in a table with a glass top. If I find a pic of the plastic boxes I'll post a shot.

 

[tarotbear]

Pix

I took some shots ...

 

[PathWalker]

Sorry the link isn't working for you - when I click it I just get a picture of a simple origami box!

Try google images for 'origami square box' - the most simple design and you'll get the idea. Bigger piece of paper = bigger box

I like your storage system too.

 

[tarotbear]

Sorry the link isn't working for you - when I click it I just get a picture of a simple origami box!

It worked this time around - brought me to a dark pink paper box ... ?

 

[PathWalker]

It worked this time around - brought me to a dark pink paper box ... ?

How odd - I get a blue box, really I do!

 

[Hemera]

Thank you tarotbear! Wow that looks really professional. And it looks good,too. That way you can still see them all. Do you have the names at the bottom then? (Or probably you do not need any names written anywhere.. )

@ParthWalker: What I get are some links and a text "Ooops! The page you're trying to view does not exist" ! How odd..
But I get the idea and I know those cute origami boxes!

 

[toj]

I took some shots ...

That is what I need to do so I can remember what I have.