I don’t often get to do projects for fun AND profit. This particular piece was made for one of my good friends. Her boyfriend knew she wanted a “Leah Ashley Original” and he wanted to make her dream come true. He gave me a budget and a timeline, and nothing else.

For some people, that sounds like a dream–NO GUIDELINES!! But it is surprisingly hard to come up with an awesome design without ANY direction.

Most clients come to me with some pictures or at least some ideas of what they want the finished piece to look like. For the most part, their concern is more the overall look and not the specific stones that will go into the piece. Because I had no ideas, I decided to start with the stone for this project instead.

I started looking at what my sources had to offer in a stone that was unique in shape or color that wouldn’t be too expensive (I did have a budget after all.) I found a 6 sided iolite that I thought would fit my friend’s personality completely. The stone had a unique shape and a gorgeous blue/purple color that wasn’t too saturated. She tends to wear more “jewel” tones, rather than the fall colors that I tend to wear, so this stone would match perfectly with most of her wardrobe. Then I had to come up with a design.

It can be hard to dissect your own artwork and pull out what your own style is. I knew that when my friend said she wanted a “Leah Ashley Original” she wanted something in “My” style. I just had to figure out what that was. After thinking about it for awhile, I decided that what she meant was that I like metal. My pieces do of course have gemstones in them, but I like to use a lot of metal also to create a design that is more than the stone. I also like very clean and modern designs.

I came up with a few options to fit the stone I had chosen and sent them over to her boyfriend.

The first one had sort of an Asian feel because my friend lived in Japan for awhile and loves everything Japanese.

The second was simple from the top, but with a very chic, modern design on the sides.

He really liked the second one but, because he is a big dork (He He), he wondered if we could change the shape to make it look more like a “V.” So I did.

He loved it and we went ahead with manufacturing!

The final piece turned out even better than I imagined. The stone is an 8mm hexagon shaped Iolite and the metal is 14K White Gold. My friend loves the piece and her boyfriend earned lots of points for making one of her dreams come true!

Diamonds are the things to have a lot of, especially in the US, but colored stones are my passion. There are so many of them and they are all so different with different qualities and colors!! Take a look at the pictures of (almost) all of the stones in my personal collection.

I have one Iolite in my collection and it is a cushion cut. Iolite is a beautiful stone that ranges from blue to purple in color. It is a popular less expensive substitute for both Sapphire and Tanzanite depending on the color of the stone. The Iolite I have is somewhere in between blue and purple and it is really pretty.

The really fun thing about Iolite is that it appears to be bi-colored. In actuality, the stones are not bi-colored but something about the chemical make-up of the stone makes it look that way. Iolite has pleochroism which simply means that when light passes through the stone it takes several paths and returns different colors depending on the angle. Iolite is called the water stone because of this phenomenon. You can tell that the stone isn’t bi-colored because the lighter color in the stone changes depending on the angle of the stone.

You can see this the pleochroism in the following picture of my Iolite. The top of the stone looks lighter than the rest of the stone but you could turn the stone the other way and the colors would reverse.

This stone is for sale! If you are interested please contact me at leah@leahashley.com.