Kerry - Afternoon Tea Experience
Kerry saw my video on Facebook advertising our competition to give away free Afternoon Tea Experiences to test out a fabulous idea we had to enable us to keep sharing the sparkle even during Lockdown
She had never met me before so we had a phone call in advance of the experience so that we could discuss what she had and what she’d like to explore.
I also asked her to What’s App me some images of her rings so I could start to get a feel for what she had and start the journey of understanding what Kerry would like to do with her pieces. At this stage she knew she wanted to use her original engagement ring which had lost a diamond and several other rings along with a sapphire pendant to create a new engagement ring.
Kerry also sent me some screenshots of designs she’d seen online that she liked for inspiration. My challenge was they were quite a broad mix of Art Deco, contemporary and a detailed cluster designs. I had some work to do to hone down on what she was gonig to like and that worked with the mix of stones she had too!
Here’s some of my notes and the first set of design ideas based on our first phone call:
I thought it might help Kerry to have three clear ‘route’ options before our Zoom call so I reviewed all her stones, sizes, quality and weighed and sorted all the metals.
I dropped of Kerry’s freshly made afternoon tea to her doorstep late morning on the Saturday of her experience and we had a nice chat to say ‘hello’ as we’d never met before and she gave me her jewellery to take back to the shop and evaluate.
Here are the pieces Kerry gave me to consider using in her new ring design:
The Zoom call was lovely, Kerry talked me through the meaning behind all of her pieces, some obviuosly meant a lot to her and others were less significant. That all helps when prioritising what to use and perhaps not to use. She was clear she’d like the blue sapphire from her pendants and some of the princess cut diamonds from her engagement ring in her new ring.
After our Zoom call I sat down in some peace and quiet and worked through all the information and ideas we had and started sketching some rough designs all based on an Art Deco theme trying to incorporate Kerry’s stones and ensuring I kept the design reasonably practical as well.
I then shared these all with Kerry on our What’s App chat:
Next steps were to unset the stones we wanted to use, check the condition of them and do a scale drawing before then asking our CAD team to create a digital design. Here’s a short video of me talking through that bit of the process:
We’re getting really close to the final design now. I find it helpful to do a scale drawing so we can lay the stones out on top of it and check it all works. I sent this little video clip to Kerry to help her get a feel for what it all looks like:
I emailed this design breif over to our CAD team to get the digital version and a couple of days later we recieved this:
I’m really happy with it but asked them to do a second version without the beading detail on the rubover setting edge around Kerry’s sapphire, just so she had a comparision with a little bit less gonig on in the design. I wanted to retain the Art Deco feel but make sure it had a contemporary slant too.
If we’ve inspired you and you would like to discuss having something made yourself, please get in touch with us using the button below or you can contact us through Facebook messenger!
Or, if you still need a bit more inspiration, you can see this ring and many other gorgeous designs in our bespoke collection here:
