New Life Diamonds is Literally Making History with Colored Cultured Diamonds

Imagine a fancy yellow cultured diamond actually created from combining the mitochondrial DNA found in the human hair from two different people. Wouldn't that be the perfect bridal diamond? How about a deep red cultured diamond created especially for Mom on her special day that was actually created from combining the hair of her husband and all of her children? What about the ideal anniversary diamond created from combining the hair from both husband and wife? The possibilities are endless. These are what we call Life Diamonds and they are our specialty at New Life Diamonds & Gems, LLC.

I am Michael Payton, President and CEO of New Life Diamonds & Gems located in Colorado Springs, CO and I have trademarked two signature diamonds that are created from combining the personal DNA of two or more people. The Unity Diamond ™ is a high quality cultured diamond actually created by combining the hair or cremation remains from two separate individuals. The Trinity Diamond™ is also a high quality cultured diamond created from combining the hair or cremation remains of three or more individuals. This technology is nothing new. For the past five years a company called LifeGems has been selling memorial diamonds that are created from cremation remains (ashes). Last year they created a .56 ct carat blue Diamond created from a hair sample from Ludwig Von Beethoven that was provided from John Reznikoff, one of the largest collectors of historical human hair. It was sold it on EBay for $202,700. That was a historical first.

We have taken a different approach. We are focusing on the celebration of life aspect rather than the memorial part. That's what inspired The Unity and Trinity Diamonds. What we are doing is taking a symbolic gesture of love and commitment and creating a literal one immortalized in a real diamond. How cool is that?

Most people have never heard of cultured diamonds and many jewelers have never even seen one, but diamond industry experts expect that to change. In an article from The Wall Street Journal titled Diamond Wars, it explains that "cultured diamonds are grown more quickly in a lab but are still chemically authentic. In the same way that cultured pearls grew to account for 95% of the pearl market". The cultured diamond industry projects these diamonds to have a prominent impact on this tightly-controlled market now that the technology is able to produce gem-level qualities indistinguishable from traditional, mined diamonds. This is good news to many since traditional diamonds have been criticized for threatening the environment, encouraging child labor and funding civil wars, this latter point being most-recently addressed in the film Blood Diamond. While Tiffany's says they won't carry them, they are already gaining ground in the U.S. market.

How are cultured diamonds made you ask? There are two basic methods. One is called chemical vapor disposition (CVD). The CVD process essentially takes a small diamond seed and place it into an atmospheric chamber and bombard it with carbon and nitrogen while applying massive heat and pressure which causes diamond crystals to form attached to the seed diamond. It's basically growing a diamond under lab conditions. The other process utilizes high pressure and high temperatures called the HPHT process. A sample of cremation remains or hair is first reduced to carbon then placed into an engineered crucible. It is then place it into an atmospheric chamber and subjected to intense heat and pressure duplicating the same conditions found deep within the earth. If we want to create a blue diamond we add boron and if we want a yellow one we add more nitrogen. This is the process we use to create our Life Diamonds. It is a fascinating process. New Life Diamonds offers four colors: red, green, blue and yellow and sizes range from .25 cts to 2. cts.

New Life Diamonds and Gems, LLC is also sponsoring the Diamonds of Hope Celebrity Diamond Auction and will be auctioning off diamonds created from the hair of celebrity donors to benefit their charity or foundation of choice. Our plan is to fund and promote the Diamonds of Hope auction by selling diamonds that are being created from authenticated hair from over 16 different historical figures that include Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, JFK, John Lennon, Mickey Mantel and Babe Ruth. To help launch the Diamonds of Hope charity event we will be pre-selling the only .5 ct Blue Elvis, Yellow Marilyn, Green J.F.K. and Red Lennon diamonds that will ever be created to four lucky private investors. Let me know if you are interested in one of these amazing historical diamonds. Our goal is to raise $100 million for charities across the globe, while doing our part to make the world a little better place. New Life Diamonds is also proud to announce that we have designated the Make-a-Wish Foundation as our charity of choice for the 2008 calendar year and have pledged a donation for every Life Diamond sold to help make a child's dream come true.

For more information on cultured diamonds, Life Diamonds or The Diamonds of Hope Celebrity Diamond Auction please visit the New Life Diamonds website at www.newlifdiamonds.com.