Remember that really awesome wide gold band I posts awhile with lots of detail? The friend/client I did that ring for was so happy with it she contacted me to get a wedding band for her husband.

She wasn’t positive what she wanted. He had expressed desire for a very simple, masculine band but she wanted something really special. She had an idea but wasn’t sure how to make it happen. She wanted to make a ring that looked like the fret board of a guitar.

Once we had the number of frets and string established I had the perfect idea of how to put her idea into design reality.

With a lot of trial and error with measurments, I made frets around the band starting close together and getting further and further apart as they went around the band just like how on a guitar the frets are further apart on the end of the neck and get closer together as they go up towards the body of the guitar.

For string, I made bands of increasing size that went all the way around the ring.

If you don’t know what you are looking at, the ring just seems to have a neat design. But if you know, it is completely accurate and very special for this particular couple.

We decided to do the ring in palladium rather than gold to save her money. They ended up moving up their wedding to hopefully ensure that all of their grandparents would be there for the special day. We didn’t have much time, so I started right away,

The casting looked so good when I got it I wasn’t sure if I even needed to take it to the jeweler! I did anyway just to clean it up a little extra and I turned out so cool!

I really hope my friend’s husband loves his ring and appreciates his amazing new wife for getting him such an awesome ring! Congrats to Jess and Daryl!

I recently ran an add on OffbeatBride.com and have, as a result, been getting a lot of really fun, different, unconventional, and beautiful design requests. This next piece is one of my favorites that I have ever done.

When I got the request for this piece I was amazed because the customer knew just what she wanted and just how to describe it. All I had to do was make it a reality.

She wanted a ring that looked like a braid with one of the strands covered in diamonds. I was surprisingly difficult to get the computer to make a braid considering that I’ve been braiding my own hair since I could reach the back of my head. Eventually I got it. I sent my client a couple of versions with varying widths, tightness, and curvy-ness.

She loved the tighter, curvier piece but wanted it a little thinner which I was happy to do. She decided to use Platinum for the metal and real diamonds for the stones.

The casting was a little rough with all the prongs…

but the finished piece turned out beautifully!

And she even asked me to engrave a super cute message inside the shank.

I friend of mine recently came to me about getting a custom wedding band for herself for her upcoming wedding. She doesn’t have an engagement ring because she doesn’t want one so her wedding band will be her only ring. She kind of new what she likes but but had no concrete ideas of where to start.

After asking a few questions, I found out that she has an aunt who has a ring that she really likes the style. She sent me a picture of her aunts ring so I could look at it.

After talking about the look of her aunts ring, I found out that she liked the width of the ring and all of the detail in the gold work but didn’t want any stones–she was worried that she would lose stones. I took the idea of her aunts ring and ran with it. I sent my friend the 2 following designs to see if I was on the right track with what she wanted.

She really loved the second design and didn’t want to change it in any way (which was awesome!) so we decided to run with it.

I altered the ring to fit her exact finger size and sent it off to be cast in 14K white gold. When I got the ring back from my caster it was a true rough casting, but it definitely had the potential to be amazing!

Because of all of the detail, the jeweler couldn’t high polish every surface of the ring and instead used sandblasting which really highlighted the design of the ring. I think it turned out more beautifully than I could have ever imagined!

I think this idea of a “slip through” wedding band is really fun. It gives you a wide band look which is really hot right now. It gives symmetry without sacrificing having a wedding band or having to get 2 wedding bands. Let me know what you think of this idea!