“Oh, I like that lavender and green….,” Laura replied to my text showing her several pairing of gems for three-stone rings.
“What should we do with them?”
That’s always the next question, isn’t it? The unset gems move you, but what next?
Here is how Laura and I got her ring out of her mind’s eye and on her finger.
In the next step, I sent Laura some to-scale sketches of ring concepts featuring her new gems. Getting something concrete on paper helps us “slice and dice” up the concepts before getting to the final design. Keep in mind any of these concepts can be a starting point for your project.
Laura likes some sparkle, so I added a diamond touch to her designs. Here’s the first round of sketches, where I imagined the three gems horizontal across her finger. In response, she sent me her sketch to the right. I hadn’t thought of arranging the gems along the vertical length of Laura’s finger. Great idea!
But, what about her sketch? What was she trying to convey with the two intercepting arcs? I had to ask… In reply, she sent me the screenshot below of a design she saw online:
I saw Laura wanted an open, almost lacy textured, ring with micro-pave diamonds. There was her sparkle factor!
Getting that screenshot really helped, but I can’t copy another ring design. I am also game enough to think I can always make something even better.
Head and heart to the task, I browsed my library of architectural and wrought iron patterns, some of which are in the collage below.
Two of the collage squares show how I started playing around adapting the forms to a ring with Laura’s center-stone trio.
Once some images started entering my mind, we went back to scaled sketches and came up with four micro-pave designs and two without diamonds. Laura selected the top row, center design.
Elegantly setting micro-pave demands high precision, requiring Computer Aided Design (CAD).
Here’s what Laura’s design looked like in CAD. We made one change – closing up the lower C-shape next to the shank, so it wouldn’t catch on clothing. Now, after Laura’s approval, we were ready to cast, set and create.
Custom-made three-stone platinum ring featuring a center 3.08-carat lavender spinel and a pair of 1.47-carat minty green garnets, accented by 134 round diamonds totaling 0.76 carats.
Voila!….. what do you think?
This is the third or fourth project Laura and I have worked on long-distance. Contact me to learn how we can do that, too.
