[image from Palma Collection]

My new necklace from Palma Collection looks like it’s made of malachite that’s magically turned red, except the red “stones” are much lighter.

San Diego-based Palma Collection jewelry are crafted by artisans working in a fair labor factory in Colombia who clean, chop, shape, and dye sustainably-harvested tagua palm tree nuts, aka vegetable ivory, into gorgeous, one-of-a-kind pieces. Here’s a video that shows the creation process.

The straps on my necklace look sort of like leather, but vegans can relax — they’re actually cotton made to look like suede.

Palma Collection’s web store launched earlier this year; Alvaro says that 5% of gross sales (a bigger and more transparent sum than % profits) will be donated to environmental and cancer-fighting organizations. “Profits can be manipulated and be shown to be non-existent…. We don’t think that at this moment 5% of sales is too much to donate to causes that support preserving Earth’s resources and fighting cancer.” Palma Collection’s currently selecting the nonprofits — the enviro one will probably be Rainforest Action Network — to be announced on the website next month.

The jewelry’s really beautiful, but apparently, people who don’t know what “vegetable ivory” is can be scared away from trying it. “It’s so hard to sell something women haven’t seen before in person,” says Alvaro of Palma Collection.

But he remains optimistic that Palma’s popularity will grow. When people see and touch the jewelry, they love Palma Collection’s stuff — and word of mouth goes a long way.

I’m wearing mine to happy hour (just 2.5 more hrs to go!) to see what happens :) green LA readers can get 10% off their purchase at Palma Collection with the coupon code lagirl until Sept. 1, 2007.