Designing for Others

One of the things I get to do is create designs for other designers and individuals. I really love to do this. It allows me to create someone's dream.

When I create a custom piece for an individual it is usually for a special occasion or because they have inherited a piece of jewelry they want to personalize.

Most designers are referred to me by my casting company and in some cases I have met designers while I have been at shows. I use CAD (computer aided design) to create designs. One of the wonderful things about CAD is that I can create renderings as we go along. These drawings can be very technical including measurements or very artistic.

One of the things that happens is that renderings are usually bigger than the piece that will be created and so the impact of the real piece can be different than the rendering. For this reason I will create a rendering and then scale it down to approximate the real size in a word document.

The large size makes it easy for my mature eyes to see details that I might miss in real life. When you are dealing with the reality of making a design into jewelry the experience of the designer and jeweler is important. The weight of metal, thickness and the ability to create and reproduce the piece is important. This is where I can help dreams come true.

The two rings above are two options I created for a customer. She had purchased a  spectacular sunstone and wanted a ring to show it off - If you look at the photo below you can see which design the customer chose. CAD renderings can be quite realistic. The customer in this case felt she had seen the ring before it was created.



After a relationship between myself the the designer or individual has been tempered through creation, the process can become quite remarkable. One designer that I have created over 30 pieces with is very close to me, the fact is we have met face to face only once has nothing to do with it. We have gone the fire of creation together.

I hope to be able to continue the relationships that I have with my customers for many years. I am very proud of the designs that I have created collaboratively. My name is not on any of them and that is okay, I support my customer's happiness and success.