Leah Ashley Jewelry Designs Creates Stunning Custom Jewelry » Palladium

Pearl Engagement Ring

Leah Ashley — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:41:56 +0000

A few weeks ago I had someone contact me who was looking for something totally non-traditional and modern looking in an engagement ring. He lives in the Czech Republic and his to-be fiance is Czech and they don’t really do big fancy diamond engagement ring there so he wanted something to fit her taste.

He really liked the trillion fire opal ring I have on my site but didn’t want any diamonds at all. He had seen some engagement rings with pearls and really liked the look of those, so I decided to try to combine the 2 ideas. Below is the original render that I came up with:

He really loved the top piece (I knew he would) and after moving the pearl over a little bit and rounding off the shank, we ended up with this:

He decided to use palladium for the metal to keep the price down and we started manufacturing.
Here are the raw casting and the pearl…

The finished piece turned out amazing! I hope she loves it!

Starburst Ring

Leah Ashley — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:51:49 +0000

This is a ring that a friend of mine actually gave me the idea for but I loved it so much that I decided to make it!

The main stone is a fire opal cabochon that has great color. On the side view picture you can see some of the play of color inside the stone and in person it is even more spectacular. The little stones are genuine diamonds and weigh 0.15 carats total. The white metal is palladium and the yellow metal is 14 Karat yellow gold.

The idea is for the diamonds in their metal arms to look like they are radiating from the center stone like the sun or a star. Let me know what you think!

This piece is available for purchase! Please contact me at leah@leahashleydesigns.com if you are interested!

Palladium, the other white metal

Leah Ashley — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:16:18 +0000

This is a design I did for a recent customer. This guy came to me with an opal that he had gotten in Australia that he wanted to mount in either a ring or a pendant for his wife. He really wanted the piece made out of platinum because he had always bought his wife platinum pieces before. The problem was that he had a pretty low price that he wanted to hit and platinum is SUPER expensive right now. I suggested using palladium instead of platinum. It looks like platinum in that it is a white metal, and it is actually in the platinum metal family, but it is a fraction of the price.

He wasn’t really sure about using a different metal but he trusted my advice and decided to give it a try. The piece I designed for him was super simple without a lot of embellishment in order to keep labor costs down but it really highlighted his stone. I used heavy prongs to give the piece a little added style and since we were using palladium the added weight wasn’t a big added cost.

I think the piece turned out really well and he was very happy when he picked it up.

He did insist on a platinum chain.