This week I have a pearl pendant for you to enjoy with sapphires and aquamarine.

When the client contacted me she had a pretty specific idea of what she wanted. She wanted a simple pendant with a fairly large pearl surrounded by sapphires. She also thought it would be neat to use slightly larger stones at the 4 cardinal points. I put together what I thought would fit with what she had described but to further accentuate the corners, I used nice dark sapphires for the larger stones and lighter aquamarine stones in between.

She loved the lighter stones with the sapphires! She decided to go with 14K white gold for the metal and all natural stones. Once the decision was made, I went ahead and got the casting done.

Once I had collected the pearl and all of the sapphires and aquamarines, I sent those and the casting to my jeweler.

The finished pieces was gorgeous! The light and dark stones really set each other off. I hope she loves it!

When buying jewelry you should also know the difference between good work done by a jeweler, and bad work done by a jeweler. This can affect you as a consumer when you have a stone set, when you have a repair done, or even when you just have a ring sized or a chain added.

Take a look at the difference in this piece before it was fixed.

Notice how the bezel around the colored stone (which happens to be an Alexandrite) is uneven. Also, the channel set diamonds are not all sitting at the same angle in the channel and some of them look dirty because the jeweler did not clean the piece completely. Also notice how the channel has grooves in it where the jeweler nicked the metal and did not fix it.

Now look at the same piece after it has been fixed by a jeweler who does very good work.

Look at how the bezel around the Alexandite is smooth and the diamonds are evenly spaced, clean, and all at the same angle. Also, the channel around the diamond is the same width all the way around.

These are all specific problems that could come up in this particular piece but it’s just one example of what can happen if you go to a jeweler you don’t trust and you don’t look over the piece before you take it.

This piece is really fun because it has a lot of diamonds and it’s three separate parts so it can be worn in an infinite number of ways (more than just what I’ve shown!)

Enjoy!

He had seen the circle design pendents on my website and wanted something like one of these but he wanted 4 stones around the outside to represent their 4 children.

Like most people at Christmas, he had a limited budget so we decided to go with silver rather than gold since he wife likes white metal and created sapphires rather than diamonds. We used created blue sapphires for the 2 stones inside the circle that would represent them (the parents) and 4 created while sapphires for the 4 smaller stones to represent their children. The silver piece we had decided to use was pre-fabricated and it had an extra loop so we decided to use it for a charm that was kind of like the infinity symbol since their family will be together forever.

The piece turned out really beautiful and she loved it!

Today I designed a cute snowman. If I were to manufacture this I would probably make it in silver with created stones but it could be really beautiful with real stones and in gold for someone who is serious about Christmas jewelry! This design could be either a pendant or a brooch or maybe earrings if you like really big earrings. Enjoy!

Stay tuned for the next few days to see what else I can come up with!