A halo of love: my special customized ring for my beloved her

Seven years ago, I found the person I wanted to join hands with for the rest of my life, so I went to several jewelry stores to try to pick out a suitable ring, but I couldn’t find anything I was happy with. Although I didn’t really care about the style of the ring, I knew it was very important for a girl. I had to see the ring on my wife’s hand a lot during the next fifty years we spent together, so I wanted to like it myself.

I remember sitting in church with my girlfriend and wanting to customize a ring, but I didn’t know where to start and was just picturing the outline of a ring in my head. Although I’m good with my hands and very creative, I’m not a jeweler after all. So, in the end, I designed a drawing, made multiple revisions, and finalized the ring by working with a jeweler, but the jeweler was responsible for the final casting.

I thought I’d walk you through the process in detail, including the interaction with the jeweler, the process of customizing the ring, and the outcome.

I. Starting the Design

I drew the initial design on a post-it note early in the morning on a weekend, I started with two crosses, and suddenly, a ring came to mind, so I redrew the crosses again and made it into a ring. I revised it six or seven times, but it all seemed a bit strange. The design was actually quite simple, a Christian-themed ring, and it was very beautiful in my mind. When I got home, I spent another week working on the drawing in more detail. I did my best to try and get the picture in my head onto paper.

II. The Acquisition of Diamonds

The chairman of De Beers once said, “Diamonds are worthless in themselves.” But if you tell your girlfriend this truth, I think you will probably end up alone. My girlfriend is very happy with the first draft of my painting, so I now need to start looking for a diamond of the right size. So I would like to remind you to consider the size of the diamond at the very beginning of designing the ring, and it’s a real pain in the ass to think about this after the fact.

It so happened that the jewelry store I had visited before was having a Valentine’s Day event, so I showed my girlfriend the loose diamonds. The clerk took out a few from the vault, and we used a stereo microscopes to zoom in on them to view them, and I have to say, you can see the grade and cut of the diamonds very clearly under the stereo microscope, and my girlfriend prefers a round cut, so we quickly bought the diamonds of our choice.

Third. go to the jewelry store for understanding

I brought my finalized ring to the jeweler and checked out the rings in the store to learn about the different types of settings such as claw setting and bezel setting. I also discussed with the jeweler the possibility of setting small diamonds on the side of the ring. I was honored to have a brainstorming session with someone who has experience in engraving. He had a completely different concept of design than I did, so I kept an open mind the entire time.

As I was getting ready to leave, the jeweler gave me a small ring made of wax and a .625 carat white stone that I could use as a model. I was also given a measuring set for ring sizing, with which I could make sure that the ring I designed was sized to fit my girlfriend’s ring finger. Since I only have a side-by-side design drawing, I need to know more details of the ring I want to design, and wax can be very helpful.

Fourth. sculpting with wax

If you’ve tried it, you know that carving a ring with wax is much more difficult than you think. It took me a craft knife or two and a set of woodworking tools to get the final result close to what I wanted. I ended up making two rings out of wax molds. My girlfriend tried on the rings and they fit perfectly. She would love to treasure the wax ring, but I had to take it to a jeweler in order to make the actual ring.

V. Decide on the details

With the design and look of the wax ring loved by my girlfriend, the next thing to do was to finalize the details of the ring. The details that needed to be decided included the metal that the ring would be made of, the size of the ring, the size of the diamond, the style of setting for the diamond, the inscription that would need to be engraved on the ring, the finish of the ring, and the thickness of the ring. The jeweler took away my design drawings and the wax ring. It took a couple of weeks before I got my ring back, and by this time it only had a basic shape and no diamond setting.

VI. Distracting Your Girlfriend

Even though the ring was primed, there were still a lot of details that needed to be perfected. At this point my girlfriend and I had been dating for eight months and we were serious about each other, so I didn’t want my girlfriend to know exactly how far along the ring making was; I was going to surprise her with a proposal, and to that end, I carefully selected a ring box and a full 6-inch bar along with some engraving tools. During the last few weeks, I pretended to carve on the wax ring to make my girlfriend think that the real ring was not yet finished.

Seven. Throwing the ring

The ring was taking shape, but it hadn’t been set with a diamond yet. This is because the ring needs to be made sure it fits the client’s needs before the setting can take place. At this point the ring was bulky, a little dull and not reflective, so I compared it to other rings in the store and suggested a few fixes that needed to be made; I needed it to be slimmer and the metal to be finely polished. The jeweler took detailed notes of everything I wanted to change and went into the final processing.

VIII. Finalizing

The ring was polished and also set with stones to finalize the shape. I was blown away when I saw it again, and it perfectly overlapped with the ring I had in my head. I then had an hour-long consultation at the jewelry store to determine the final specifications of the ring and settle the payment.