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Sarah proposed to Chris with a pair of classic, simple white gold wedding bands, and they were married shortly thereafter. Even though they had already exchanged wedding bands, Chris still wanted to create a special custom engagement ring for his wife. He had several heirloom family diamonds and a brilliant green garnet that he envisioned clustered together in an asymmetrical, organic, delicate engagement ring.     Chris sent me photographs of his gemstones so I could start sketching ideas. After he dropped off the stones at my shop, I measured them and created several CAD options for him to review....

Alastair Blake Peters, a fellow artist and former classmate from the Tyler School of Art, reached out to me requesting a pair of custom plug earrings. I laid out a spiraling fern design, based on the Fibonacci sequence, as a jumping off point for our design discussion. After reviewing the initial images, he sent me a couple of inspiration images demonstrating the radial patterns and dark, subtle coloration that he was drawn to. He also mentioned that he really admired my Protea Collection, and would love to see a plug design based on the Protea Amulet. So, for the second...

Birthstone month: July Color: Red Family: Corundum Moh's Hardness: 9 Transparency: Transparent Rubies are part of the corundum family, and are, in fact, simply red sapphires. Sapphires come in every color, but red sapphires are differentiated as rubies. They are brilliant red in color, with the highest quality stones leaning slightly towards purple-red. Corundum that is a paler red, leaning towards pink, is sometimes classified as a pink sapphire, instead of as ruby. The determination is often at the discretion of the dealer. Most natural rubies have some kind of inclusion, often displayed as a milky or "silk" look from...

Filigree refers to delicate wire work in a piece of jewelry. This style of decoration was historically (and sometimes, still is) created by bending, twisting and curling small pieces of wire carefully by hand. These days, filigree is most often created in the wax model, which is later cast in metal. Filigree can be the central design in a piece of jewelry, like in these elaborate filigree earrings: Or, it can be used as a decorative element to fill open space and add structural support, like in the side of this pendant: Filigree is often added to the airline of...

Birthstone month: JuneColor: AllFamily: PearlMoh's Hardness: 2.5Transparency: Opaque Pearls are lustrous, opaque specimens that don't quite fit into the gemstone mineral group. Rather, they're organic gemstones like jet or amber. Pearls are created when a small irritant, such as a piece of sand, becomes trapped or is intentionally placed inside specific types of mollusks. Natural pearls are found in nature, while cultured pearls have a small seed or starter intentionally placed inside the mollusk to grow a pearl. For both natural and cultured pearls, the mollusk creates layers of nacre around the irritant, and eventually a pearl is formed. Pearl...