violet sapphire – The Gemstone Project

A Day in the Life

Posted on August 15, 2016August 15, 2016 by grayspinel

Have you ever wondered what a day looks like in my life? Today is the day to find out!

7:00-7:15am Do a preliminary check of my email and social media to see what might be coming my way for the day.

7:15am Get my daughter dressed, fed and ready for the day. I’ve recently weaned myself off coffee, and it’s been absolutely brutal.

8:00am See my husband and daughter off to work and school/camp.

8:15am A thorough check of emails, start planning the day. If it’s a Monday, I write a bit on Facebook for the blog post, mentioning any big things that have been going on, designs I’m working on, sales etc.

9:00am Take photographs of gems and jewelry, depending on what the sun is doing. During the winter months, it’s almost always overcast, so sun is a precious commodity!

10:00am Respond to email. Post to social media, usually instagram.

10:30am Post new items to etsy, edit photography, write descriptions for items while eating lunch – often yogurt, unless I’m feeding my daughter too, which means I will eat something more substantial.

12:00pm Shipments usually arrive around this time. If I’m not expecting anything, I will probably ship items.

1:00pm Work on new designs, or incomplete designs that need to be revised and finished.

4:45pm Stop working on designs, start thinking about family time and dinner.

6:00pm Dinner time! I often recruit my daughter to help me cook, which for a 4 year old means stirring. She is an excellent stirrer!

7:00pm Play time. Sometimes I will try to post to social media here and there, but I usually reserve this time to spend with my family. Often we will go for a walk if it’s light out, or watch something on the Food Network (my daughter’s favorite shows are Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen because she likes eliminating people), or just play with toys.

8:00pm Get my daughter’s bath time and bedtime routine started.

9:00pm Do a final email check for the day, post to instagram. Tuesday is usually my blog writing night.

9:30pm Watch tv shows or a movie with my husband, I tend to continue checking social media throughout (while he is checking his email!), and might post to SnapChat. Some favorite shows range from Game of Thrones, Better Call Saul (and Breaking Bad!), Homeland, UnREAL, Arrow, Once Upon A Time, among others.

11:30pm Hit the sack. I’m usually lucky to make it to 11:30 without falling asleep. Every once in a while I manage to stay up past midnight, but it has become more rare lately.

I mentioned that I will post to FB about my sales – I am running a sale for the month of August, and you have to check my Facebook posts for the coupon code!

Miscellaneous Updates

Posted on December 28, 2015December 27, 2015 by grayspinel

Just a quick update this week, New Years is coming up soon (where did this year go?), and getting my new office/studio together is taking up way more time than I planned on.

My wonderful Angie Crabtree “Elle” print was finally framed, and it’s waiting for it’s new spot to be hung in my new office. I went simple on this one, and hopefully, since she is working on some antique diamond cuts, I can give “Elle” a companion sooner rather than later!
I haven’t been able to sketch and design as much as I normally do, snow shoveling has taken way too much of my time, as well as driving in the snow. It turns out that driving slow is key for avoiding wrecks! Right now I have three (plus) projects going on – two ring projects that I have very clear ideas on, and another more fluid project that I got a whole parcel of stones for, and have too many ideas on, so that will need to be worked on, hopefully in the coming week or so.
Not much going on with stock settings, I decided against rolling out the Dignité for now, and will probably reconsider in the future. I am working on a three stone idea that has been formulating in my head that lends itself well to pairing with the Vivant necklace.
Instead of the Dignité being released, I posted the Intrepide – a wonderful interesting halo that’s just a slight tweak on a simple halo, that really comes with big impact! This setting is available for any size and shape of stone, please contact us for details.
I have a Voeu ring that just came out of production, and is available to view in person at David Klass Jewelry in Los Angeles. This one was made with a peachy-brown imperial garnet with both yellow gold and rose gold. This setting really lends itself well to smaller stones, giving them a good dose of presence, even for a smaller stone.
I got a few new jewelry tools for the holidays, so I’m excited to use those, both for pictures and just in general.
I am considering sending several sapphires to AGL for certification, but the negative side of doing that (for the customer) is that the prices will inevitably go up.
Speaking of pricing, I think I might do a sale on my items on etsy for January. I will decide in the next week or so.

A bit short today, I have been completely overloaded, but will hopefully get back into the groove again soon!

Personal Shopping: Lavender Sapphire

Posted on December 14, 2015December 13, 2015 by grayspinel

Well this week has been crazy. We have had some insane weather here in the Pacific Northwest, including snow, rain (enough for Seattle schools to close, if you can imagine that amount of rain), 70+mph winds, freezing fog, and then record high temperatures. Yes, it was in the 50s this week, which is downright balmy for this far north at this time of year.

Now, why would I talk about the weather, you might ask? Well, on November 17th, we had the above mentioned nasty wind storm, which knocked power out all over Spokane…and damaged part of the roof at the USPS sorting warehouse. Which, when the second wind storm hit, weakened the roof further to the point that it had to be evacuated. This happened just as a 3.62ct Mahenge spinel arrived in the ill-fated sorting facility in Spokane from Mayer & Watt. (If you don’t know Mayer & Watt, you should.) The gemstone that I was planning on evaluating and writing today’s post about. So that post will have to wait for next week. But a neon “original find” hot pink/red Mahenge should make for a good Christmas week post, so I’ll just have to let it go until next week.

Now, I’ve been working on some custom designs for some of my favorite clients, as well as looking at new stones for new clients, and really trying to get all of the stock collection up and running. One thing I’ve recently started doing is really going out and searching for stones, personal gemstone shopping, if you will. And I’ve been lucky enough to get in contact with the right people, at the right time, and find some extraordinary stones that I really thought we would not be able to find.

For instance, and if you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen this stone, but I had a client come to me looking for her engagement ring stone. She wanted a lavender, leaning blue, oval sapphire that was at least 9mm wide on the width, precision cut. Which, if you’ve thought about it, translates to about 5-8 carats, depending on cut. So, as soon as I saw her wish list, I said, “Hey, this is going to be incredibly hard to find. I would start thinking about alternatives or concessions you feel comfortable making.” So she did, and said that she thought a lighter pink or even a white sapphire might be acceptable, adding round to her list of acceptable shapes. And I started keeping an eye out for those. Which is when I found Mayer & Watt.

white retry
Image is property of Mayer & Watt.

Geoffrey Watt participates in a gemstone appreciation group on Facebook, One World Gemstone, and when he posted an image, I went and looked at his company’s FB page. There was a white sapphire that was round, which fit my client’s new criteria list. So I reached out and asked about the round white sapphire, and while Geoffrey and I were talking about it, I mentioned originally looking for a lavender. To which Geoffrey said, “You mean like this one?”

retry
Image is property of Mayer & Watt.

Insert my heart popping out of my chest.

At 5.97cts, 10.7×9.2×7.5 it was exactly what we had been looking for. I was so excited that not only was this stone in existence (I truly thought that it wouldn’t exist, or at least, that we wouldn’t find it) that it was within reach, and it took me about two hours to compose the email to the client with the details because I was so excited and in shock.

After jumping through a whole bunch of hoops, and Geoffrey making every attempt to accommodate our needs, it was hers.

Since then, she actually sent it to Jerry Newman for a recut, to clean up the symmetry a bit since it would be her engagement ring stone. Jerry did an amazing job, managing to only lose 8.3% loss, from 5.99 ct to 5.49 ct. The depth was originally 7.43 mm and is now 6.9, keeping the original face up dimensions at 10.7 x 9.2mm.

bb886150-2609-473b-9c18-c411cc015e9f
Images are property of Jerry Newman.

Not to be overly gushing, but when I originally got this client request, I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to come through for her. And it’s been through a couple of incredible colleagues in the gem trade that I was able to make a client’s engagement ring dreams come true.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

In the event that you see something in Mayer & Watt’s inventory that sparks your interest, feel free to request information through our contact page. Please keep in mind that Mayer & Watt are exclusively wholesalers, so they will not respond to your requests directly.

Musings, Mise En Place, Pastry

Posted on November 2, 2015November 1, 2015 by grayspinel

Back when I used to be a pastry chef, I struggled with cake decorating quite a bit. I felt like there was often too much empty space to fill up. I think that it’s one of the reasons I loved creating composed dessert plates so much, I could create the dessert items and they turned into the decoration for the plate, rather than covering the dessert in decorations. I have always struggled with creating something completely from scratch – having a huge blank canvas to fill, rather than having at least a starting point to grow from. You can’t grow a plant without a seed.

I remember with finding inspiration for a composed dessert, considering flavor profiles, and utilizing the colors that naturally came with those flavors as my starting points, and building from there. The dish that comes to mind is one made with cherry mousse and white peach mousse with a pistachio cake – using a barely there peach, a bright pink-red and the muted pistachio green to bring interest and brightness to the dessert, while also standing out among all of the chocolate/vanilla colors. The dessert in it’s entirety was beautiful, with wonderful colors that are organic to the item itself. Those flavors came from items that had interesting colors to begin with. Perhaps this is why I have such a hard time with filling space just to fill space – if the design element doesn’t make sense, if it doesn’t come from an organic place, why add it? And that is likely why I had (and have) such a hard time with decorating cakes. My own wedding cake had no decorations but chocolate covered strawberries and fresh berries on it.

Much like the beaten to death line from every traditionally trained chef I’ve ever met, “If it’s not edible, it doesn’t belong on the plate.” Period.

And in bringing up my pastry background, I think I’ve finally come to the realization that this is the place where I get my overthinking from. Mise en place is the French phrase that means “everything in it’s place” and it’s the very first thing that every cook is taught – before service, every item you will need for service must be ready. Preparation is absolutely everything in cooking, without preparation, you’d immediately be thrown in the weeds when service starts and you need something you don’t have at the ready.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m much happier starting out with a smaller canvas to fill, the item of jewelry, typically with a built in starting point, rather than with the huge blank canvas of something such as a wedding cake, or even a birthday cake. It’s much easier to fill the space, to add just a little, and have that small element mean a lot more.

So along those lines, I have two more ring designs coming up that will be added to The Elle Collection, a true solitaire (no accent stones) named for one of my mentors, as well as a ring that will have some small diamond accented elements, but will be mostly a solitaire as well. I think that these will be added before the end of the year and I’m so excited about them!

I’ve been a bit all over the place this week, with some family stuff going on, and preparing for Halloween with a little kid and her activities to contend with, so I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with things outside, but also I will be debuting two new bands in November (rather than the end of October, as I had originally planned) because I’d been getting so much interest in one, and I’m just in love with the lines of the other.

There are less than 8 weeks left until Christmas, and while I will still be selling ready-made items until the week before, custom items are already going to be difficult to complete and have delivered by Christmas, if they aren’t already in the planning stages. I would recommend requesting any stock items from the Elle Collection to be ordered before Thanksgiving to arrive by Christmas, to allow for production time with the holiday rush.

I also wanted to mention that I do have a coupon on etsy running right now for 20% off orders over $100 running through November 7th (this coming Saturday!) so take advantage of it before it’s gone! The coupon code for that is “BURMESERUBY” (no quotes) and you can visit my Facebook page for the story behind the coupon.

Updates on Jewelry Line

Posted on September 21, 2015October 6, 2015 by grayspinel

Sometimes I go into Sunday and I realize that I have no idea what kind of blog to post for Monday. And there are sometimes when I’m super organized and have blog ideas or even whole blog entries that are ready to be posted a month into the future. I currently have a bunch of informational blogs that are in the works (at least ten?) but I haven’t had time sit down and write, edit and crop pictures to add to them, so I’m just going to write a bit about what I’ve been up to!

I don’t know what is going on, but I’ve hinted around at things a bit on social media. My daughter was going down the stairs earlier this week, when she took a tumble and fell 2/3 of the way down the entire flight. Not to be outdone, my husband tried to jump down the stairs to catch her, and in the process fractured his ankle, while she just has a handful of bruises. So, I have been driving them everywhere and taking care of dogs, cats and the house as well as my usual activities and chores, and my work has been suffering as a result. My husband is finally a bit more mobile, and getting better every day, but most things are still a struggle.

I typically try to avoid working much on weekends, since it’s the only time I really get to hang out with my family, but extenuating circumstances happen from time to time, and you gotta roll with the punches. So, if you have sent me a conversation on etsy or email inquiries, and I am slow to respond, that is why. I will get to everything eventually, it will just take a while longer than normal!

Anyway, I have a necklace design and a ring design that are just about finished and out of production. Not sure if I will put the necklace design up onto the site immediately or wait for a bit, but as soon as that ring prototype is in my hands, and photographed, I will get it up on the site, which should be later this week. It’ll be the Aurore setting if you want to be on the look out for it. I am waiting for two halo ring prototypes to be completed, and again, as soon as those are complete, they will also go straight up onto the site. I’m super excited to share these with you – they have been in the works for so long! If you want sneak peeks of these upcoming items, the place to go would be Instagram, where I tend to post at least 3 images a day of gems I’m playing with, jewelry items, architecture, my animals or pretty flowers – which will likely soon turn into winter scenes!

I am also working on a custom setting for a gorgeous blue-violet spinel cushion, a setting for a large violet sapphire, and just got word that I will be getting some stones in the not-too-distant future for some more custom projects (sounds like earrings and rings). I also had an idea for two pairs of complementary statement earrings that will be fantastic once I can collect all of the stones for them. Oh, and I received some amazing gray spinel pairs from one of my favorite spinel vendors.

Stay tuned! Fun stuff is on it’s way!

AGL Lab Testing

Posted on July 6, 2015June 30, 2015 by grayspinel

I have had a lot of questions about untreated gems in my brief stint on etsy. One thing I would really like to discuss is getting gems tested. I prefer to get gems tested by AGL, and I am going to talk about an experience with getting a gem evaluated by them.

I want to start out by saying that I’m willing to get any gem tested, so long as the customer pays for shipping and testing. I typically do not get stones tested myself, because most stones don’t merit it, whether through the stones resiliency against treatment, or the the lab test cost ratio to the cost of the gem. It doesn’t make sense to get an AGL Gem Brief that costs $60 (plus shipping both ways) for a $100 gem, especially in the event that it’s a stone that isn’t routinely treated or has a characteristic that isn’t likely to be desirable to the general public (for example, a golden brown topaz). If the untreated designation brings a sale value that is higher than the cost of the testing, then it makes financial sense to do it. Or if the stone is a high enough price, and the stone variety is routinely treated.

I first contacted AGL about the violet sapphire late in 2014. I wanted to know about the procedures for getting a Gem Brief and then how to upgrade to a Prestige report. Maria emailed me back that I had to indicate it on the submission sheet.

Early in April I filled out the submission form and mailed it off to AGL. After roughly two weeks, I emailed Maria because I hadn’t heard anything from them (it’s a bit weird to mail an item to a location and not get any confirmation that it was received!) and wanted to make sure that it arrived at the destination. I have a deep distrust of USPS after an incident years ago involving Registered and a missing spinel that eventually turned up. Maria emailed me back that the stone had not only been received, but that it was done, untreated, and went through my shipping options. Instead of shipping Registered, she decided it would be a shorter wait to send it via armored vehicle overnight.

So shortly after that conversation, the sapphire was back in my hands. With it’s fancy AGL Prestige Report. I have joked about this since then, but I’m only half joking when I say that I want to get an AGL Prestige Report on all of my gems. There is a cool digital diagram where the stone was mapped out and has all of it’s measurements and facets displayed, descriptions of the treatment, the color, the rarity, etc. It almost made me wish that I had a gem that was important enough to get a JewelFolio, but being that pricing starts at $3,000, I don’t see that happening soon.

AGL Pricelist
AGL Prestige Report
AGL GemBrief

So let me say again, I have no problems sending a stone off to a lab to have them test it. But sometimes it really just don’t make sense! I suggest that sapphires, rubies, and emeralds have some sort of testing, but honestly, most garnets, spinels, topaz, chrysoberyl, and others probably don’t merit it, just due to the price proportions!

This sapphire has since sold, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends up getting set by it’s new owner!

Viva Las Vegas! JCK 2015 Part 2!

Posted on June 11, 2015June 10, 2015 by grayspinel

Part 2. Or day 2. This is by far the most photo intensive post in this trilogy.

Friday

Naturally, after not getting to sleep until 3am, we slept in a bit, though that was not the plan. The plan was to get to JCK ASAP and start trawling through gemstones as early as we could. Instead we woke up and started looking at gemstones again, this time in daylight, before deciding it was time to eat. Of course I went for the color shifting 6ct violet sapphire first.

None of the other photos came out well, so I’ll skip them in an already picture heavy post.

Meeting with Amy Phillips of David Klass Jewelry

First thing we did after gathering our badges to go into the show was meet with Amy with David Klass Jewelry. She was showing us a wax for a ring David is making with the emerald from the first post. A client had been working with them on a diamond halo design, but had kind of hit a brick wall after a few CADs. I made a couple of tweaks to make the design a little bit more delicate and feminine. Since it’s not complete yet, I’ll keep it to a more boring view. I will say that I am so excited to see this project completed!

AGTA Show: Prima Gems

From seeing the wax, we went downstairs to the AGTA show, otherwise known as colored stones! So you already know I was so excited!

Of course I studied the map and made a beeline for Prima Gems. I browsed for a while, bumping into a few people that I recognized, including Yvonne Raley.

I just want to say that Nattalie Shah is an angel. My companion was seeking out red spinels and green garnets, but in the meantime, I had every single spinel pulled out of the case and had them spread out all over the counter. Not joking:

Here is a 12ct Mahenge Spinel, moderately included.

Same stone, being a show off.

While my companion was digging through red spinels, I was amusing myself going through a massive parcel of smaller red and pink spinels, pulling out stones that talked to me and putting them on a gem sorting tray. Most of these were the largest in there, but there was one that had color that just popped out at me.

The entirety of the parcel I was going through:

Playing with the UV flashlight.

Some of the red spinels that were being scrutinized.

No, really, scrutinized!

At one point, I got tired of red spinels, (though not tired enough to ask them to put them away!) and asked to see this really awesome blue-green tourmaline. This stone needs to be made into a necklace.

From the red spinels, we went to green garnets. Check out these mints!

In the meantime, I had put this little guy to the side for myself. Tiny, but you can see the neon color from across the room.

I’d forgive the shape for this color, the perfect blue-green for a mint.

Then Nattalie pulled out the UV light to play with a 4ct tsavorite. It was like Christmas in one stone!

Doing a mean impression of an emerald. Inclusions didn’t hinder the performance of this stone at all, though magnification makes the inclusions look worse than they are. This is one of those stones that doesn’t show it’s true beauty in photographs.

AGTA Show: Random vendors

At this point, we had spent so much time pouring over Prima stones after our late start, that we had run out of time, so we raced around just a bit looking at a few other booths. I took some photos of items that caught my eye.

A couple little rose cuts.

Colored stone melee, starting at .8mm to 3mm.

Untreated emerald rings.

Brazilian Paraiba. I should have inquired about pricing, but didn’t have time to stop.

Managed to have Gem 2000 pull some larger light pink sapphires to view for a client.

Ogled Gem 2000’s emeralds. The emeralds were everywhere!

And their spinels. Spinels were also everywhere.

I was also on the look out for blue sapphires for another client, so we checked these out with Gem 2000 as well,

The Other Roommate’s Arrival

After hopping on the shuttle and rushing to meet our other bling sister, we found her, and of course helped ourselves to her jewels. I know you’re surprised, but I took a bunch of photos:
Blue zircon.

Green sphene earring drops from Prima Gems.

Tanzanite double halo ring.

Vintage ruby and diamond ring, Love Affair Diamonds.

Ideal cut diamond earrings with ideal cut diamond halo jackets, ID Jewelry.

Mint garnet from Prima Gems

Spessartite garnet from Prima Gems

Ideal cut diamond

Dinner time: Texas de Brazil

So, by this point, it was time to grab dinner. We were picked up in a limo, and taken to Texas de Brazil. I hadn’t had Brazilian in several years, and this Brazilian put THAT Brazilian to shame. If you have the opportunity to go to one of these restaurants, do it. And hit up the salad bar in a major way, because it’s so so so good. Just as good as the meat, which is, of course, the main attraction.

The table in our private room was made of one giant piece of wood, and I loved the contrast with the lucite chairs.

My favorite dinner companion. Diamonds.

And to finish up the night, some random colored stone rings, including a couple of mine.

Yet again, we didn’t end up falling asleep until 2am, and there was no partying involved! The last day was fast approaching and I was determined to get to the show earlier than I had today.

Day 3! Blog post fast approaching! Tomorrow!

Viva Las Vegas! JCK 2015 Part 1!

Posted on June 10, 2015June 9, 2015 by grayspinel

I don’t even know where to start because I did so much while I was in Las Vegas, so I guess I’ll just go in chronological order and give an abbreviated look into three of the most intense days of my life.

Thursday

So, I’m lucky enough to live relatively close to Las Vegas. As a result, I decided to drive across the Mojave (which is not a decision to be taken lightly!) and save a bit on airfare. Well, just as I had pulled off the freeway to stop at an ATM, and was stopped at a stoplight, I picked up my phone to check the map, and a cop pulled me over for using my phone while driving. Apparently I need to start using paper maps rather than my phone as a map. That did not start my trip off well. In addition to that rough start, my lovely bling friend who was rooming with me, her flight was not only delayed, but she was moved to another flight, that would have her arrive ten hours after she had originally been scheduled.

Not a good start to what was supposed to be a fun weekend.

So, at that point, alone and grouchy, I checked in, got some free drink vouchers (bless the woman at the check in counter!) I unpacked everything, and decided to check my messages, where my delayed roommate had mentioned a potential dinner date with Roger Dery. Seeing as how I hadn’t eaten anything all day, I figured I should probably put something in my stomach. So I text Roger and arranged to meet him at a restaurant a block from his hotel.

Dinner with Roger Dery

Let me start out by saying that Roger is wonderful. I’m not just saying that because I know he’ll read this either! I don’t want to talk too much about dinner because we talked about a lot of gemstone stuff, my plans for the future, his history with gemstones, posting on Pricescope (we both typically refrain unless we think very carefully about what we’re going to say before we say it), the increase in interest in gray spinel, mining, etc. You get the picture, I basically got as much information out of him as I possibly could over a couple of hours.

Gemstone showing with Roger

After we finished dinner, Roger invited me to view the gemstones he had with him, and of course I jumped at the opportunity! Who wouldn’t?! Here are some of the pictures I took of some of his gems.

Chrysoberyl

Orange sapphire. Just a tiny bit more brown than a fine orange garnet. This picture does not do it justice.

A large blue sapphire

My favorite stone of the night, a 2.03ct blue sapphire

Iolite cabochon. A wonderful violet color.

One of many kiwi garnets.

Another kiwi garnet.

A fine spessartite, as usual, this picture does it no justice.

The amazing crown on a red garnet.

A gorgeous burnt orange garnet that has a tinge of pink to it; another favorite of the night.

Admiring the chrysoberyl.

I took pictures of every single gem he brought with him, but some of them came out terribly, so I won’t post those! Roger gave me some helpful hints about the business and made some great suggestions as to next steps I should take. Not long afterward I finished looking at the gems, Jason Brim, Ryan Quantz and some other gemstone afflicted came by to go through Roger’s gems, and talk about gems. We also talked at length about Sharing the Rough, which I was able to see at the Newport Beach Film Festival. But more on the film later!

Back to the Bling Room

At this point, it was midnight and my roommate had finally made it to our hotel, so I decided it was time to head back….and look at more bling.

Colombian emerald cut by Lisa Elser.

6+ct violet sapphire from Gene Flanigan at Precision Gems.

Electric blue zircon from Roger Dery, customized Gabriel & Co setting.

A red flame spinel in a custom Bez Ambar setting with Blaze diamonds

A special transitional diamond from Love Affair Diamonds. This diamond comes with a story!

Violet sapphire from Natural Sapphire Company, setting from Jeff Davies.

Shoulder views of Gabriel & Co setting and Julia B Jewelry setting with a Prima Gems red Mahenge spinel.

I finally passed out around 3am, already feeling a bit overwhelmed. This is what a colored stone lover’s nightstand looks like when we have a bling weekend.

Part 2 with the lowdown on Friday’s insanity coming tomorrow!

Hint: it involved a lot of time with Prima Gems, and a limo ride. Not related to each other!

Gem Blast: Violet Sapphire

Posted on May 11, 2015May 11, 2015 by grayspinel

I’ve recently taken possession of a Violet sapphire that perfectly skirts the line between purple and blue. I just had it certified by American Gemological Laboratories. I had never done that before, and it was a pretty great experience, especially when AGL testing found out that it was completely untreated.

3.90ctw 9.6 x 7.69 x 6.39

I have a colleague who has been seeking out the perfect violet (or blurple, as she calls it) sapphire for the last several years, and this one ticks almost all of her boxes.

Through her search, I’ve been deeply involved, and recruited several other searchers.

In the end, this stone was discovered after she found her ideal stone, so she briefly considered using it for a necklace, but decided that she needed to share the wealth instead.

In our searching, we discovered that these stones are typically color shifting to some extent. This one transitions from blue to purple, but is violet in most mixed lighting situations.

The color on my laptop screen is less saturated than on my phone, where it looks more like the stone in real life.

Once I get it back from AGL, I plan on taking a lot more photos of it. It’s a challenging stone to capture.

You can see that it has some cut flaws, showing a slight darker bowtie in the above image and a small partial window in the two shots below.

Showing a slight windowing effect that is more visible in picture than in real life. I wouldn’t dream of touching the cut on this, I wouldn’t want to alter the color in any way.

This stone has been listed for sale on LoupeTroop.

David Klass Solitaire Setting Completed

Posted on March 23, 2015March 6, 2015 by grayspinel

So, back in September, I posted a Gem Blast with a purple sapphire I had picked up at a gem store on a trip back home. It was sold to me as a 2.40ct Untreated Color Shifting Sapphire. It does tend to look more blue in daylight, and more purple under fluorescent.

In November I posted about how I won David Klass’s Solitaire Setting contest, and posted a step by step guide of my drawing process. I mentioned not being able to vocalize my design process in that post, so I’m attempting to do that a little bit here, in this post.

I had a really hard time deciding if I wanted to use a high quality CZ for the setting or if I wanted to use one of my stones. I originally chose this stone to make the sketch and the setting around because there aren’t a lot of oval solitaire settings out there. This could be easily adapted for just about any symmetrical shape – round, cushion, emerald, radiant, asscher. Hearts, pears and trillions would require more intense modifications, of course.

Colored stones are typically oval cuts, just because of the shape of the rough. But because most diamond solitaires out there are round, there just aren’t a lot of settings made specifically for ovals. The jewelry business has a love affair with diamond solitaires, and because of that, I find setting selection to be really limited for interesting solitaire settings that weren’t necessarily intended to be an engagement ring.

The shoulder view was actually the original starting point for me. I was inspired by a detail in another setting, but the look and feel is completely different – the original ring had a similar filigree detail, but it was just a detail, not the actual structure of the ring, the way mine turned into. I’ve shown the inspiration and the finished product to people before and they have been like, “Why are you showing me these two rings?!” and not seeing any resemblance at all.

The top view sort of just turned into what it was from how the shoulder detail worked out. The entire design started out and turned out to be based on that shoulder detail.

You can see a little bit of uneven metal here – it’s really only noticeable under magnification, and especially here because of the way the lighting hits it.

Now, typically I don’t like the leave the gallery blank and sort of boring like this – I feel like it’s one of the most neglected parts of a ring, but I didn’t want to overload an already very detailed setting with details that weren’t necessary. Part of the ring needed to be simple and clean, especially since I added the engraving detail on the bottom of the shank.

I realize now that when I was taking pictures I didn’t really do a good job of capturing the profile view, so the above is probably the best view I got. About 4 hours before the sketch was due, I was still madly sketching and trying to discern a profile view. It couldn’t be too busy and it couldn’t be too simple, otherwise it wouldn’t flow with the rest of the setting.

This is probably my favorite view of the setting – seeing both the profile and the shoulder view, and how they interact and curve into each other.

A couple shots of the actual physical ring and the drawings. You can see just how closely David was able to follow my design and how few tweaks were actually made, and they were typically structural things.

At the very last minute, I changed the setting to add engraving to the bottom of the shank. I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t visible from the top down view of the ring, and you can see that it is barely visible at all, just like I planned.

Overall I’m pretty overwhelmed, yet amazed at how easily it came together, and how well David was able to execute my design into CAD from a simple 2D sketch.

Amazingly, David had the ring back to me exactly 1 week from the day I got the sapphire to him. He made a huge effort to get it to me quickly because I was going on a series of trips and wouldn’t be at home to receive it for a consistent period of more than a couple days.

So, now that you’ve seen the solitaire setting, I have actually made strides towards getting the band from this post made, so I should be able to post an update for that band soon too!