Flat pack furniture is furniture which is fabricated in flat parts and designed to be quickly and easily assembled. It is also sometimes called ready-to-assemble furniture or knock-down furniture. The primary advantage to flat pack furniture is that because it is packed flat, it is extremely space efficient, saving significant amounts of money for the manufacturer by reducing shipping and storage costs. Consumers in turn benefit from this because the company can pass the savings down with less expensive prices.

Designers of flat pack furniture typically create furnishings which are very easy to mass produce. Most companies also pre-drill holes and do other preparation work so that consumers can fit the pieces of the furniture together with minimal work. The furniture is packaged with all of the hardware and tools necessary to assemble it, along with assembly directions. The assembly directions for flat pack furniture are rather notorious in some circles, as they typically include vague illustrations and poorly worded sentences, forcing consumers to puzzle out the assembly of the furniture on their own.

Semi-precious gemstones are minerals or organic compounds used in jewelry and adornment. They differ from the four cardinal gems, diamond, sapphire, ruby and emerald, because they are more plentiful and therefore, are usually less expensive. Amethyst was once considered the fifth cardinal gem, but recent discoveries of extensive South American deposits have led to its re-classification as a semi-precious gem. A large proportion of the semi-precious stones are of the silicate class of mineral, which composes 90% of the earth’s crust.

One way to economize with jewelry is to replace cardinal gems with semi-precious stones of a similar color. Zircon, which shouldn’t be confused with cubic zirconium, is a normally colorless stone that makes for an excellent diamond substitute. In fact people wishing to avoid counterfeit diamonds might consider using zircon as a gem replacement.

Many royal families have been surprised to discover that the emerald treasures they owned were actually peridot, the crystal form of olivine. Though more yellow-green in color, peridot is easily confused with the more expensive emerald, and a lovely gem in its own right. Another emerald alternative is the creamy-green jade, known in China as the royal gem. Extremely variable in color, jade can be anywhere from pale apple-green with milky stripes to the dark even luster of imperial jade.