About Crystals & Creations and Elica

Crystals & Creations - Minerals, Meaning, and Discovery.

Crystals & Creations did not actually begin with crystals.

It began with art.

I’m Elica, the woman behind Crystals & Creations. I have always been a maker, painter, collector, and chronic starter of projects that begin with some version of, I wonder if I could make that.

More than a decade ago, during a period of major change in my life, I decided I wanted to start sharing and selling some of the things I was creating. At first, that meant my paintings and other artwork.

Then came handmade crystal jewelry.

And then, inevitably, came the crystals themselves.

I had already been fascinated by crystals for years, both for their beauty and for the meanings people attach to them. Once they became part of my creative work, I became increasingly interested in the stones themselves too. Where did they come from? Why did they form that way? Why did certain cultures associate particular stones with certain ideas? Which ones were natural, treated, dyed, mislabeled, unusual, common, ancient, or simply strange?

One curiosity led to another, and Crystals & Creations grew right along with it.

What started as a small art business eventually became tens of thousands of orders, years of sourcing and handling minerals from around the world, a rather ridiculous personal collection, countless handmade pieces, and an ongoing education in just how enormous the world of rocks, minerals, crystals, art, history, and human curiosity really is.

Today, all of those pieces still belong here.

Art, Minerals, and a Very Deep Rabbit Hole

Crystals & Creations is part creative studio, part mineral shop, part reference library, and part excuse to investigate interesting things far beyond what was probably necessary.

The "Crystals" part is fairly self-explanatory.

The "Creations" part has always been just as important.

Over the years, my work has included painting, mixed media, encaustic, pyrography, jewelry, photography, mineral displays, decorative pieces, and plenty of experiments that never fit neatly into one category.

I have never been especially interested in making the same thing forever.

I like following ideas.

Sometimes that leads to a canvas. Sometimes it leads to a piece of jewelry. Sometimes it leads to an old slab of agate sitting on my desk while I spend three hours trying to figure out what mine it came from.

That combination of creativity and curiosity is really the heart of this business.

The Minerals

I have spent years buying, handling, photographing, selling, researching, and collecting crystals, rocks, minerals, slabs, and lapidary material.

The longer I have worked with them, the more interested I have become in knowing what they actually are.

I want to know why an agate formed that way, where a piece of jasper came from, whether that suspiciously electric-blue stone has been dyed, what caused those inclusions inside a piece of quartz, and how someone collecting rocks fifty years ago might have identified a slab that has since lost its label.

Whenever possible, I want you to know what you are looking at too.

That means being transparent about treatments, dyes, coatings, synthetic materials, trade names, uncertain identifications, and provenance when it is known.

Sometimes mineral identification is straightforward.

Sometimes it becomes geological detective work.

And sometimes the most accurate answer is simply, we don't know for certain.

I would much rather tell you that than manufacture a confident answer just because it sounds better.

The current collection includes familiar crystal-shop specimens alongside pieces from old American lapidary collections, including agates, jaspers, petrified wood, slabs, slices, rough material, and plenty of wonderfully strange rocks accumulated over many years.

Some become pieces for sale through the Mineral Cabinet. Others find their way into the Specimen Library so the information connected to them can remain useful long after an individual specimen has found a new home.

The Meaning

My interest in crystals has never been limited to geology.

Crystals & Creations also grew within the metaphysical crystal community, and that history is still very much part of the business.

I have studied crystal and vibrational healing, symbolism, energetic traditions, and the ways people have used and understood stones in spiritual practices. I remain fascinated by the meanings people assign to minerals and by the role stones have played in ritual, folklore, religion, art, adornment, collecting, and everyday life.

You will still find that material here.

What has changed is that I am much more interested in exploring it deeply than simply handing you a list of five things amethyst is "for."

Where did these ideas come from?

Are they ancient, modern, cultural, commercial, symbolic, or some mixture of all of those things?

How have people actually used these stones?

Why do certain meanings survive for centuries while others seem to appear almost overnight?

I think those questions are so interesting.

You are welcome to approach this part of the site spiritually, historically, skeptically, experimentally, or simply because you are curious.

No belief test required.

The Discovery

This may be my favorite part.

Minerals lead everywhere.

Follow one piece of petrified wood far enough and suddenly you are learning about ancient forests.

Follow an Oregon sunstone and you end up inside a volcano.

Start researching an old turquoise specimen and you may find yourself reading about prehistoric trade routes.

Pick up a slab from an old lapidary collection and you can lose an entire afternoon wondering who collected it, where it came from, whether the mine still exists, and what the half-legible pencil mark on the back was supposed to say.

That is the spirit behind the Specimen Library, Down the Rabbit Hole, and much of what Crystals & Creations is becoming now.

There will always be another strange rock, forgotten story, questionable label, geological oddity, historical belief, artistic idea, or tiny mystery worth investigating.

I have accepted that I am probably going to follow most of them.

About Me

I live and work in Eugene, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest, which is an exceptionally convenient place for someone who likes both art and rocks.

I am an artist, collector, researcher, photographer, maker, and lifelong learner.

I am also the person actually running this website.

There is no enormous editorial department behind the Specimen Library and no mysterious warehouse full of people assembling a carefully manufactured "small business" personality.

It is me.

I photograph the rocks. I research the strange ones. I write the articles. I make the art. I choose what goes into the shop. I change my mind about layouts. I fall down research rabbit holes. I occasionally acquire entirely unreasonable quantities of old rocks because somebody tells me there is a forgotten lapidary collection sitting in a garage.

Crystals & Creations has changed quite a bit since I first opened the shop.

So have I.

The paintings led to jewelry. The jewelry led to minerals. The minerals led to geology, history, collecting, folklore, lapidary work, photography, research, and more ideas than I will probably ever have time to finish.

But the thing underneath all of it has remained remarkably consistent.

I like making things.

I like discovering things.

And I like sharing the interesting things I find along the way.

If you have ever picked up a stone because it was beautiful, strange, meaningful, ancient, mysterious, or simply impossible to walk past without wondering what it was, you are in the right place.

And if you happen to like art too, even better.

Welcome to Crystals & Creations.

Elica

Questions, corrections, interesting rocks, artistic inquiries, and mineral mysteries are always welcome:
contact@crystalsandcreations.com

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