#JOTW My Sunshine Dreams of Spring pendant - colored stones and diamonds

[ellekay]

I love how it goes with your ring! Your design/visualization skills are really impressive.

 

[Dandi]

This is absolutely phenomenal. The colours that you chose are out of this world, you have an amazing eye for design. And thank you so much for providing all of the details, I am on the hunt for some diamond melee, and it sounds like K Rosengart is exactly what I've been looking for. Enjoy your new stunner!

 

[foxinsox]

What an incredible pendant! It’s really beautiful and so joyous in its colours. Thank you for the detailed breakdown of cost etc.

 

[Austina]

It is drop dead gorgeous. I love citrine, I think it’s a really underrated stone, it’s total sunshine around your neck.

 

[Bishbunch]

Simply stunning! I read your other thread and was very interested to see the end result. It exceeded my expectations! Wowza!

 

[Patty]

Wow, that is a piece of art! I love the color combinations...beautiful!

 

[tyty333]

Now that's a pendant! I would buy shirts in every color to match it! Really pretty!

 

[collier]

As everyone has said, wow! That is one stunning and unique pendant, sunshine dreams indeed! I loved seeing all the pictures; it has so many different personalities based on the lighting.

You clearly missed your calling as a jewelry designer! Thank you also for discussing the cost of the project! I often shy away from custom work due to the unknown cost variant.

The pendant looks completely at home on you and what a great complement to your ring!

 

[ac117]

What a striking pendant! Beautiful outcome, colors are lovely and looks fabulous on you!

 

[cushioncutnut]

Goodness gracious that turned out amazing. Loved how you put your own powerpoint together and shared the process and the name of the company!

 

[2Neesers]

Your pendant is gorgeous and so beautifully colorful! Diamondmounts does amazing work!

 

[Polyhex]

What an amazing work of art. I can't get over how perfect the colors, the detail, and the proportions are.

Thank you soooo much! I was shocked at how beautiful it was when the design came together, it was like someone far more talented designed it.

Wow !

Thank you!!

SO STUNNING AND AMAZING!!!

Thank you so much!

Wow, so intricate and thoughtful. The amazing results clearly show your passion for this project! Now you can enjoy the piece for years to come.

I absolutely love it, thank you!

Good gracious, this is amazing! Lovely and uplifting to look at. You’re very creative!

Thank you so much! I felt like a far more talented designer's hand was invisibly guiding mine.

The COLORS!
What a ridiculously beautiful and colorful pendant that is!!
And thank you for giving pricing details because that makes it much easier to figure out what metalwork actually costs to have done. It can be intimidating when you have limited funds to even ask questions of cost from a manufacturer/bench.

Thank you so much! Yes, I decided to share to encourage people operating on budget constraints. It would have cost I believe 2x-2.5x to do in the US.

Whaaaaat???? The pendant is so luxe! Looks incredible and happy/bright

It makes me super happy! Thank you!

Oh wow! This is bursting with life, color and happiness! What a unique and lovely piece! Enjoy!

It certainly is a big lift to my spirits after this dismal year! Thank you!

Wow @Polyhex , if your beautiful piece isn’t an ode to spring then I don’t know what is! Thank you for sharing your creative process. Really fun to follow along.
You really had a vision and instinct for this project. The colors really sing together!
I’m very happy the company you used was able to bring your vision to life so beautifully and that the outcome is bringing you much joy. Your lovely smile says it all!

I am super super happy, thank you so much!

Polyhex, thank you for sharing such detailed information and costings. This really helps others evaluate the feasibility of their ideas.

The pendant looks fantastic.

Thank you!! I shared the pricing information to encourage people, as custom work can be very expensive and this manufacturer is not!

 

[Polyhex]

Jaw-droppingly luscious. I think I said "Wow!" out loud six times while I was scrolling through your photos. Very, very nice!

Hah hah, I am saying "Wow!" a lot myself. Thank you!

Wow! What a work of art!

Thank you!!

Holy mother of Mary, what a stunning pendant!! It’s absolutely GORGEOUS!

Thank you sooo much!

That is just super! How incredibly beautiful and unique.

Thank you!!

I love how it goes with your ring! Your design/visualization skills are really impressive.

Thank you!! I will post the ring soon. I felt like some way more talented designer was invisibly guiding my hand, I got lucky!!

This is absolutely phenomenal. The colours that you chose are out of this world, you have an amazing eye for design. And thank you so much for providing all of the details, I am on the hunt for some diamond melee, and it sounds like K Rosengart is exactly what I've been looking for. Enjoy your new stunner!

Thank you!! I have not found pricing better than K Rosengart, I hope it works out for you!

What an incredible pendant! It’s really beautiful and so joyous in its colours. Thank you for the detailed breakdown of cost etc.

Thank you so much!

It is drop dead gorgeous. I love citrine, I think it’s a really underrated stone, it’s total sunshine around your neck.

100% agree. I think it's underrated because it's often poorly cut and prone to windowing or big tilt windows. I have a number of perfectly cut citrines now and they are like halls of fiery or candy-colored mirrors!

Simply stunning! I read your other thread and was very interested to see the end result. It exceeded my expectations! Wowza!

Thank you sooo much!

Wow, that is a piece of art! I love the color combinations...beautiful!

Thank you!!

Now that's a pendant! I would buy shirts in every color to match it! Really pretty!

Hah hah, that's a great idea!! Thank you!

As everyone has said, wow! That is one stunning and unique pendant, sunshine dreams indeed! I loved seeing all the pictures; it has so many different personalities based on the lighting.

You clearly missed your calling as a jewelry designer! Thank you also for discussing the cost of the project! I often shy away from custom work due to the unknown cost variant.

The pendant looks completely at home on you and what a great complement to your ring!

I absolutely love how the stones shift in color, especially the citrine which moves between orange fire, embers, molten gold... Troy did an amazing job on this stone. Thank you!!

What a striking pendant! Beautiful outcome, colors are lovely and looks fabulous on you!

Thank you so much!

Goodness gracious that turned out amazing. Loved how you put your own powerpoint together and shared the process and the name of the company!

Thank you!! I have found I get much better results when I write a real "spec" for the custom jewelry. I hope it helps other people.

Your pendant is gorgeous and so beautifully colorful! Diamondmounts does amazing work!

They sure do!! Thank you so much!

It looks like the sun is peeking out today, so I hope to get a few sunny photos. Fingers crossed!

 

[DorotheaBrooke]

Wow!

 

[icy_jade]

Your new pendant is stunningly beautiful! Congrats! Pls feel free to post more pics, am really enjoying the ones you posted

 

[Catmom]

That's so gorgeous and unique!!

 

[Polyhex]

Wow!

Thank you!

Your new pendant is stunningly beautiful! Congrats! Pls feel free to post more pics, am really enjoying the ones you posted

We had sunlight yesterday for the first time in what felt like an eternity so I am about to post more as I finish editing them. Thank you!

That's so gorgeous and unique!!

Thank you so much!

 

[Polyhex]

Here are the sunny photos. It may be hard to imagine but the green in particular is very much under saturated by my camera. It's a much more vivid green in real life. The other colors are more accurate.

After I came back inside from my photo session in the back yard, my husband commented that he looked down from our second floor windows and he could clearly see the citrine.









It really looked like this when I snapped the photo!!



On the neck outdoors:



And finally back inside as the sun was going down, these were taken with very dim natural lighting coming in through the windows:

 

[bludiva]

wow!

 

[Neptune]

GLAM!

 

[oncrutchesrightnow]

That is awesome. It even looks artistic from the back.

 

[Polyhex]

wow!

Thank you!

GLAM!

Thank you so much!

That is awesome. It even looks artistic from the back.

It does! I took a ridiculous number of back photos, here's one in the sunshine:



Thank you!

 

[nala]

It suits you so well!! Beautiful!

 

[meely]

It’s just fabulous, looks amazing on you!

 

[Mreader]

I am in awe of this piece and what you are able to envision with your stones! I just read about your jade Art Deco idea. Just wow!!

 

[Mreader]

A little over a year ago, my husband gave me this 25.65 ct citrine from Bahia, Brazil, cut by Troy Richardson of Excess Design. He cut in in the “Supernova” oval by Robert Long, which I love because of the broad, geometric faceting similar to old cut stones. It even has a culet!

Troy's photo:


It was even lovelier in person, and ranges from a vivid orange to a deep yellow:

(that weird circle is a reflection, the gem is better than eye-clean)



I wanted to do it justice in a large pendant. I love vivid colors, both complimentary and contrasting, and over the course of the year I collected a bunch of relatively inexpensive colored melee. I really wanted this pendant to be vivid and joyful, especially given all the suffering that has gone on in the world over the last year. And I wanted it to remind me of sunshine, spring flowers, and the natural world. I looked at a number of different options but a simple halo didn’t really feel right to me.

Then I saw the wonderful 1.25 ct tsavorite that @arkieb1 listed on LoupeTroup, and I immediately felt that it “belonged with” the citrine. So I bought it, even though I still had no idea how I would put them together. ArkieB's photo:


As usual, lovelier in person. My photo:


I do all of my jewelry design with in Powerpoint, using photos and shapes that I have sized to their real-life scale. When possible I also take photos of metal elements like bezels to try to make sure that my design is roughly going to fit together. I started playing around with different options… I really liked green and violet to contrast with the orange of the citrine… this is with 3mm violet sapphires, 2.5mm tsavorite, and 1.5mm diamonds:



But I realized that green-on-green was not going to look so great next to ArkieB’s tsavorite, because I could not match the exact same color of green. I DID however have medium pink tourmaline melee that was the same size as the tsavorite, 2.5mm:



Once I saw this color combination of pink, violet, and green I really liked it and wondered what I could do if I extended the same color combinations to the citrine. I worked on the below design, and as soon as I saw it, I knew that this was IT!


Now, how to get this done inexpensively? I already had a great experience working with CaiMao in China, but I was curious about the option of using gold and sterling and they don’t work in sterling. I had seen the beautiful work that @dk168 had from Diamondmounts, also located in China, and really wanted to try them. I sent them my “design specification” for the pendant and asked them to price it in a number of different metal combinations. I'll share what my design specs look like in case the format is helpful to anyone:


I also asked them to make a decorative basked on the back like this:


I worked with Cherry at DiamondMounts. She was super helpful, responsive, and easy to work with. They changed the diamond size to 1.4mm but otherwise my design worked. She quoted a number of different metal combinations and I wound up going with 18k yellow + 9k white gold because it was only a little bit pricier than 18k + sterling, and 9k gold is super durable. She didn’t mind that I was going to supply all of the stones myself, including diamonds (I get all of my melee diamonds from K Rosengart, and they are superb and have the best pricing I am aware of.)

The CAD came back perfect on the first try, no changes needed:


I shipped my stones to China, and then came the wait!

(continuing in another post due to # of image limits)

Also I use Powerpoint for presentations; I would have no clue how to do this! But now I need to figure it out.

 

[Polyhex]

It suits you so well!! Beautiful!

Thank you so much!

It’s just fabulous, looks amazing on you!

Thank you!!

I am in awe of this piece and what you are able to envision with your stones! I just read about your jade Art Deco idea. Just wow!!

You are too kind! I am just attracted to shiny objects that can be seen from across the room.

Also I use Powerpoint for presentations; I would have no clue how to do this! But now I need to figure it out.

The functions I use the most of are:

• Add photo, then use "crop to shape" under Picture Format to crop the background out and get the stone to a cushion-shape, a circle-shape, and rectangle-shape, etc. Then also under "Picture Format" manually adjust the size to actual mm dimensions. I normally double the dimensions and then divide by 10 to get a good size to work with in Powerpoint. So a 4mm square stone would become 0.8 x 0.8
• Same thing for Insert Shape and adjust the size under Shape Format when I don't have a photo of the stone and just want to use a placeholder shape that's the same size as it.

 

[arkieb1]

It's amazing an heirloom worthy piece!!!

 

[Tekate]

WOW OMG, thud, what a perfect piece of ART! and jewelry, exquisite taste.. I'm in love! congratulations and you look magnificent with it on.. kudos! and send it to me PRONTO!

 

[bright&shiny]

@Polyhex, I have no idea how I missed this thread - or your project, but you are a fantastic designer! It’s a stunning piece and I hope you wear it happily for many years to come - it’s absolutely beautiful!