Jewelry Redesign Story #12: What’s in the Drawer?
Before and After
THE REDESIGN CHALLENGE:
Emily had been holding on to a number of gems, jewels, and stones for a long time. While she liked the look of the materials, she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with them. She’d been thinking of making them into a fun necklace and pair of earrings.
Emily wanted the custom made jewelry to be fun but overall not too trendy. She wanted the designs to be fun but not a design that would go out of style.
THE REDESIGN PROCESS:
We started off with a redesign for Emily that included tassels but Emily decided the tassels were too trendy.
We worked instead to make a collection of items from Emily’s gems and the new-to-her labradorite. She wanted items that she could dress up or down so we thought having mix-and-match options in her redesign was a great way to make multiple styles of wear possible.
Emily decided on a long medallion beaded necklace, a shorter beaded necklace with a clasp, and a pair of dangle beaded earrings. She wanted a medallion necklace that incorporated labradorite as the medallion centerpiece, a calcic stone with color that plays between blue-gray, green, yellow, and pink.
Once we had decided on the type of stone, there were a number of different shapes we gave Emily to choose from. Given the options of pear-shaped, oval, cushion, and marquise labradorite, Emily decided that she liked the pear-shaped stone the best with a channel setting.
Medallion sketches
In addition to the medallion design and the shape of the stones into necklaces, we knew we would need to create a clasp for the smaller necklace (the larger one was big enough to go over Emily’s head to wear) as well as some posts for the earrings.
Final Sketches
THE REDESIGN REVEAL:
Designer Seohee modeling the jewelry before handing it off to Emily
Emily was so excited to receive the three total custom jewelry pieces that were made from her beads. She loved that she could wear the short necklace alone for a casual look and add the other redesigned jewelry piece by piece to create a more formal and elaborate look. With three pieces altogether, it seems like the possibilities are endless!
Emily was so thrilled to go from having lots of stray beads and gems in a drawer to having lots of different stylish options of jewelry in the drawer instead.
A set of final jewelry pieces
Materials: 14k yellow gold castings, 14k yellow gold beads and spring closure, pear-shaped labradorite cabochon
*The chrysoprase and amethyst beads are Emily’s and the bead prices are excluded from the total price.
Manufacturing Level: Medium
Design Level: Difficult
Shake up your drawers here.
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