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New Brunswick woman turns rocky hobby into flourishing business

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SAINT JOHN, N.B. -

A new online business based in the Saint John, N.B. region is taking rock collecting to the next level by selling locally sourced raw stones and crystals that have been found in New Brunswick.

Lea St John is the woman behind the Instagram page Raw Stone Studio, where she sells everything from quartz, to calcite, to fluorite, and much more.

She’s been collecting rocks since she was a child, even getting her prospecting license with her father years ago.

“We went looking for minerals, gold, a prospector’s dream is gold, and just to see what we could find,” says St John. “As I got older, with a full-time job, I have quite the collection of beautiful crystals that I’ve found along the way.”

With that collection, and an increasing interest around crystals, came an idea. St John decided to sell her discoveries through her own enterprise.

She describes her pieces as being “locally, sustainably and ethically” collected and when searching, tries to look for cliff-sides and other places where rocks have fallen naturally.

“As they fall down with the help of gravity, different veins of crystals and other stones get exposed as well. We try to do as little damage as possible to where we’re going so, we like to let nature do the work,” says St John.  

St John sells her items not only online but also through the local store, Obscurity, located in uptown Saint John.

She also recently collaborated with other businesses in creating the “Saint John Crystal Box”, which includes two locally-collected crystals, a geode rock sugar cookie, a geode Epsom bath bomb, Amazonite bracelet, keychain made with local calcite and more.

St John will also be at the Saint John City Market this weekend with some of her items. As far as her favourite crystals, she says it has to be Quartz crystal and fluorite.

“It comes in these beautiful pinks and purple,” she says. “And calcite is always a nice one because those stones break off in these nice, square-like shapes and they’re just very pretty.”

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