How to Turn Drab to Fab With a Custom Jewelry Order

A diamond is forever — but the piece of jewelry it is set in might not be!

Special jewelry, whether it's a piece you bought years ago or a precious family heirloom, can sit unadorned in a jewelry box if it becomes outdated or starts to show its wear. The experienced bench jewelers at Jewelry Creations love to breathe new life into these pieces, using your ideas to make a custom piece you'll love to show off.

Jewelry Creations' teams loves designing and creating custom jewelry. "Having a chance to play a role in recreating a piece of jewelry, giving it new life and adding to its story is truly an honor," according to their website. "We have transformed thousands of pieces of jewelry over the last 40 years and are proud to have been chosen as the region’s number one jeweler for the last 24 years."

Here are some tips to get you started:

1) Think about the gemstone's past and the future wearer. Perhaps your wife loves to garden; you might work with a jeweler to design a leaf-shaped pendant (that also resembles a heart), with gems placed down the stem representing each of your children. Or maybe your future fiancee loves everything Irish, so you want to incorporate a trinity knot into the ring band. A jeweler can help you refine your idea into a one-of-a-kind design.

2) Think about how custom you want to get. A bench jeweler can sketch a design from your ideas and show you a "wax" model before starting on the custom piece. Or, if starting from scratch is too intimidating, Jewelry Creations also has a selection of loose gems and earring, necklace and ring mountings to help you get started. Of course, there is plenty of jewelry around the store to use as inspiration!

3) Plan ahead. The entire process takes about 3-4 weeks, maybe longer depending on design changes.

4) Read up on the process. Did you know that most jewelers don't use wax models any more? They use a CAD (computer aided design) to first share an image rendering and then use a 3D printer to make a plastic model.

Jewelry Creations has two bench jewelers: Kendra, a graduate of the Penn Foster Career School for Jewelry Design and a certified diamontologist by the Diamond Council of America, and Tom, who has more than 45 years of experience in the jewelry business as a bench jeweler, watch maker and former store owner. Tom is GIA Graduate Gemologist — and he even has a patent for a jewelry making tool!

Want to see what Kendra and Tom can create with your older, drab pieces? Visit jewelrycreationsinc.com or call 603-749-3129 to schedule an appointment.