Creating 32 Earring Looks With Blue Sapphires, Diamonds, Pearls

Designing Eye | Jewelry Styling | Legacy Jewels | Progressive Pairs

Boldly Blue! Creating 32 Earring Looks from one New Pair of Custom Jewelry Earrings

Boldly Blue Custom Design Jewelry Blue Sapphire Gem Stone

Laura moved quickly on a pair of “sweet” blue Sri Lankan sapphires, claiming them as hers just before I sealed the box returning them to my dealer in Thailand. I flew to Laura’s home, under an enchanted blue sky, so we could visit and discuss how to set her new sapphires in custom jewelry earrings. Sitting at her kitchen table, warmed by a fireplace, she showed me the jewelry she had collected over the decades, including several pieces passed down from her mother.

The jewelry gene is strong in this family.

Unfortunately, Laura didn’t have much opportunity to wear her mother’s jewelry because of size or style preferences. Many of her mother’s pieces had round diamonds in varying sizes.

In her earring collection, Laura already had two pairs of Cynthia Renee “Progressive Pairs” interchangeable wardrobing jewelry as well as a pair of diamond studs and white pearl studs. Wouldn’t it be nice to create her new blue sapphire earrings so they could interchange with her existing pieces and keep her mother close through using her diamonds? I can do that for you too; click here and we’ll talk about how to start.

Boldly Blue Custom Design Jewelry Blue Sapphire Earring Sketch

Creating the Design

Before our visit, I had sketched several jewelry design concepts for the blue sapphire pair. Laura’s eye landed on a design inspired by a pair of Art Deco earrings I saw years ago. Inspired by the vintage earring form, we modified it to a more curvy, feminine shape with a lotus (or tulip?) top that would nestle her mother’s diamonds. Is it interesting to see how a design concept evolves?

Boldy Blue Custom Design Jewelry Blue Sapphire Earring Design

We engineered her earrings to have three interchangeable pieces: 1) the floral foundation stud; 2) the curved central “bridge” to connect the foundation stud to the drops; and 3) the sapphire drops. All three pieces would be interchangeable – not just with each other, but with several pairs of Laura’s “old” earrings that we would adapt to work within our interchangeable “Progressive Pairs” system. We call this “making the earrings progressive.” Creating new earrings to interchange with existing earrings takes a whole lot of back and forth, which means time and patience.

We were not just creating new earrings with three separate sections that all interchange, but these new earrings’ sections had to also work with the interchangeable mechanisms we added to three pairs of Laura’s old earrings. Adjusting one piece to fit better, can then make five others not fit…

We added granulation on the curved central “bridge” piece. Texturing was applied by hand, which is more reflective and finer textured than casting the textures.

Progressive-Pairs-Earrings-Blue-Sapphires-Pearl-Diamond-Final

Voila! The Finished Full Custom Earrings in 950 palladium (to be light on the ear) featuring 6.70 carat blue sapphires and accented by 2.10 carats round diamonds.

Remove the Lotus foundation piece on top and use the two other segments with her Pearl Studs.